1.1 The late Howard Schott opened his dissertation, which was essentially
an edition of Frobergers keyboard music, by admitting in effect
that it would sooner or later become obsolete: It is not yet taken
for granted in the realm of music that the works of important composers
should receive a constant re-editing such as is regarded as entirely
normal in the literary world.1 For those who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, Schotts edition
was a belated replacement for the old Austrian Denkmäler, whose texts no longer reflected current understanding of the sources
or the musical style.2 Since then, much more has been learned
not only about the sources and the music but also about their historical
context, and the entire repertory of seventeenth-century keyboard music
in Europe has been undergoing a re-examination in recent scholarly work.

1.2 The pace quickened in the late 1990s with the discovery of what
would turn out to be the first of two major manuscript sources containing
copies of Frobergers keyboard music. These arrived as scholars
were piecing together a chronology of the composers music, based
in part on a reconstruction of what were presumed to be at least two
missing volumes of keyboard pieces.3
At the same time, important biographical information was being added,
and the extant musical sources were being subjected to greater scrutiny
than ever, revealing new details about copyists, dates, and lines of
transmission.4 The year 1993 also saw the first volume of a new edition
of Frobergers keyboard works by Siegbert Rampe;5 issued just as Schotts last volume appeared, this seemingly bore
out Schotts words about re-editing. Although the new
project is not under review here as such, other publications of its
editor are considered below.

1.3 Most recently, a major new autograph has surfaced. At this writing,
its whereabouts are not publicly known and its contents are inaccessible.
An extensive description has been published in an auction catalogue
which is republished in the present issue of this Journal (see Maguire)
and reviewed below on the basis of the present authors examination
of the manuscript.6 But although Sothebys generously
granted ample time to view the manuscript, copying of its contents was
not permitted, making it impossible to give a satisfactory discussion
of the manuscript or its contents here. Clearly this manuscript ought
to have a major impact on the evaluation of all other Froberger sources,
including those discussed in this article. But because it may be some
time before the new source is accessible to scholars (if ever), a detailed
consideration of the auction catalogue is justified.

1.4 Despite these ongoing developments, performers have tended to neglect
this repertory. Nor has it been the subject of much analytical or interpretive
criticism, even though for more than a century musicologists have recognized
Frobergers music, or at least his suites, for its subjective expressivity.
Recordings have been relatively rare, in part because Froberger and
those around him were never as flashy as their north-German contemporaries,
probably also because many of their most remarkable compositions, such
as Frobergers famous laments, are preserved in texts that leave
much to the players intelligence and imagination. With the exception
of Schott, editors have tended to duplicate errors and inconsistencies
present in these texts, puzzling the would-be performer. No contemporary
treatises explain the performance of this repertory, which tends to
be heard on instruments and with conventions applied that are more appropriate
to later, eighteenth-century works.

1.5 The present contribution reviews representative examples of recent
research and performance. In addition to publications based on the three
new manuscripts, it considers several recordings as well
as a sample volume from what seems to be no less than a project to publish
the entire corpus of seventeenth-century Germanic keyboard music. Although
Frobergers music will be the main concern, I begin with the last-named
item, which serves to put Frobergers work in a broader musical
context.

2. Rampes Deutsche Orgel- und Claviermusik des 17.
Jahrhunderts

2.1 Since the early 1990s, the editor of the present volume has been
responsible for an extraordinary outpouring of books, articles, recordings,
and editions of mostly Baroque music. These include complete
editions of the keyboard music of Sweelinck, Weckmann, Georg Muffat,
and Froberger, as well as a collection of first editions
of music by more obscure composers, of which this is the second volume.
In principle, this is a project that will cheer every scholar and performer
of seventeenth-century European music, for the repertory has long needed
to be revisited. And in many respects the series does just that, offering
hefty and apparently up-to-date scholarly apparati as well as
musical texts that show new wrinkles in format and notation.

2.2 Yet in other respects Rampe remains very much in the tradition
of predecessors such as Guido Adler and Max Seifert. The project is
organized in terms of composers, and by genre within the works of a
given composer. So much is probably unavoidable in a commercially issued
edition intended for practical as well as scholarly use.
One result, for better or worse, is that Rampe can claim to present
the complete works of obscure figures such as Marcus Olter (represented
by a single work). But another result is that works are removed from
their original contexts, and pieces preserved together in the sources
are re-sorted into categories defined by the editor (or publisher).
Moreover, the sheer scale of this project, apparently undertaken largely
by a single scholar, raises the question of whether any one editor,
no matter how brilliant, can stay abreast of the burgeoning scholarship
in this area. It is troubling to find frequent citations to promised
future publications by the editor, yet few references to relevant work
by scholars based outside northern Europe.7 Under such circumstances, a reader must be vigilant that evidence is
being accurately evaluated and that valid deductions about provenance,
attribution, handwriting, and are not shading into what Peter Williams
has called assertorial musicology.8

2.3 I fear that the latter surfaces all too frequently in what may
well be Rampes most important project, the Froberger edition.
The first two volumes of that edition have been reviewed elsewhere,9 and although the present publication
differs in important respects, two common and somewhat contradictory
features are, on the one hand, an almost alarming accumulation of information
about sources, copyists, and related matters, and on the other hand
a failure to evaluate or interpret the musical texts that they preserve.
In the most recent volumes of the Froberger edition, this has led to
a proliferation of readings, versions, and even works; variant readings
from sources of sharply differing quality are presented essentially
uninterpreted, alongside movements whose attribution remains in doubt
despite the editors assertions about their authorship. For the
experienced scholar-performer, this may be a bonus, but for anyone else
it is a source of confusion, as the editor provides little guidance
toward understanding the status of individual versions or readings.

2.4 The present volume comprises more obscure works preserved in unique
sources, yet even here an assertorial style in the volumes preface
gives way to a remarkably uncritical approach to editing the musical
texts. The latter are so poorly edited and, it seems, so arbitrarily
selected, as to raise questions about the competence of the editor.
Problems begin with the title of the volume, which is more than a little
misleading. The word Deutsche is interpreted liberally to
include music by seventeenth-century composers working within
what were then the borders of the Holy Roman Empire (p. xiii).
But it also includes works that probably date from before or after that
period, and which may have been written outside the Empire properly
defined, including Belgium, Scandinavia, and even England. On the other
hand, the volume excludes works for the Austrian court appearing in
the editors Organ and Keyboard Music at the Imperial Court
1500–1700.10 Composers represented—mostly
by just one or two works—include Buttstett, Cornet, Erbach, Caspar
Hassler, Kuhnau, Peter Philips, and Nicolaus Adam Strunck, as well as
eight more obscure figures and several pieces that remain anonymous.
By no means all of the works are first editions; in addition
to several acknowledged re-editions, Rampe edits for the second time
Struncks ricercar on the death of his mother, the Hassler work,
and the canzon by Olter (which, despite the apparent tonality of its
opening entry, is best described as being in C not F minor).

2.5 As useful as it may be to have such pieces transcribed into modern
notation, one wonders exactly how the repertory was selected; seven
other known attributions to Strunck are left to languish in old editions.
Hence the present volume will serve at best as a sort of Anhang to the existing repertory of available pieces. Many of the pieces are
corrupt, incompetent, or both; at least some of those assigned to better-known
composers are of doubtful attribution. For instance, the pavanes attributed
to Christoph Walter and Hieronymus Brehme in a manuscript now in Sweden
are at best student exercises, full of parallel fifths and other solecisms.
A toccata from the Turin tablatures, attributed to Matth. Kinigl,
is an incompetent pastiche; Rampe has recognized two passages quoted
from the eighth toccata in Frescobaldis Toccate e partite of
1615, but the piece borrows from toccatas 9 and 10 as well.11 Hence twenty-two of the
pieces thirty-three measures, and the only interesting ones, are
by Frescobaldi, cobbled together with a stylistically foreign introduction
and a lame transitional passage. Almost as much a pastiche is an anonymous Fantasia. Auff 2. Clavier, which quotes liberally from Sweelincks
Echo Fantasia in C.12 It may be of some interest that such
music was copied and perhaps played. But what does it tell us except
that some musicians were content to play haphazard arrangements of favorite
bits from early seventeenth-century classics?

2.6 In fact very little of this music will be of interest to any but
the most committed specialists, and it is hard to believe that the editor
even played through certain pieces in the volume, whose nonsensical
chords and inept voice leading can only be the work of bad pupils or
hacks. Especially incredible is the claim that Christoph Walter stands
… among the most significant German keyboard composers of the
sixteenth [sic] century (p. xx).13
His music rather provides evidence for something resembling a folk tradition
in provincial places, where evidently the outward forms but little of
the content of elite music was understood.14 That copyists reproduced such barren and pointless music as Walters
fantasias is a reminder that scribes could be even less competent than
composers, probably incapable of hearing in their heads the music they were copying.
Even the ricercar by Strunck on the death of his mother, of interest
for its autobiographical title, is a disappointingly square, inexpressive
exercise in chromatic melodic intervals and unusual leaps, lacking the
variety and ingenuity that lends interest even to Frobergers driest
contrapuntal exercises.15

2.7 In a statement of editorial policies, Rampe accuses unnamed predecessors
of over-use of conjecture and reconstruction
(p. xxi). But the manifestly faulty nature of many of the present sources
means that any edition based on them must make corrections if it is
to be more than a diplomatic facsimile. And Rampe does sporadically
emend the text or insert notes in brackets. Yet, in a Conzon
(sic) attributed to Christian Erbach—a pleasant little
piece, perhaps an intabulation from the late sixteenth century—two
suggested corrections are clearly wrong, and two obvious howlers are
ignored.16 Within the first sixteen measures of
an anonymous Toccata 6. toni (no. 6), three easily corrected
voice-leading errors are left to stand, and one measure is left with
an unexplained extra sixteenth note.17

2.8 Arguing against an attribution of the latter work to Scheidt, Rampe,
following Dirksen, speaks of severe weaknesses in compositional
execution18—but
at least in these passages the problems are evidently ones of transmission.
Rampe is probably right to question Scheidts authorship of the
work. But insofar as stylistic considerations enter into the decision,
these would have to be based on a text edited to eliminate such obvious
mistakes.19

The attributions of two chorales attributed to Buttstett, and a little
praeludium (prelude and fugue) assigned to Kuhnau, are almost plausible
on a stylistic basis, if one overlooks questionable details of voice
leading. The Buttstett Choral â 3 on Vom Himmel hoch
resembles Bachs so-called Arnstadt chorales in alternating between
brief flourishes and simple settings of each phrase of the melody.

2.10 Far more problematical are the attributions to Cornet and Philips,
where Rampe attempts to add to the corpus published in recent complete
editions of these two composers. The Fantasia 4. toni attributed
to Cornet is a competent example of mid-seventeenth-century Netherlandish
organ writing, interesting for the registration markings Cornet
in x and x out. But although Rampe views the variations
on Den Lustelyiken may (no. 12) as stylistically consistent
with Cornets work (p. xv), the short-winded embellishments, which
sometimes leap by sevenths and other odd intervals, constitute a failure
to make sense of the tunes asymmetrical phrasing and are hard
to attribute to any competent composer.

2.11 Philips is a much more important composer, arguably second only
to Byrd among English composers of around 1600. The spotty transmission
of his keyboard music has prevented its importance from being recognized,
and one would like to find more works comparable to those preserved
in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Alas, the five pieces here attributed
to him are all anonymous in the manuscripts. Rampe, admitting that their
authorship will be settled only by the discovery of new sources
(p. xviii), offers no good reason for attributing them to Philips.20 All, including another version of Den Lustelyiken
may, appear to be intabulations or arrangements, a genre associated
with Philips because of their prominence in the section of the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book devoted to his music. But only two, a Che
fa after Marenzio and an Almande damor, seem
to be the work of even a competent musician, and neither has anything
like the richness of counterpoint and variety of figuration found in
pieces attributed to Philips.

2.12 Despite so many deficiencies, the volume may prove useful if only
for providing a sampling of the types of music that were being copied
on the peripheries of the central tradition represented by Froberger.
Facsimile pages provide examples of the diverse types of notation used
for this music, and although the facsimiles should have been sharper
and larger, they at least prove that many of the faulty readings have
been transcribed accurately. Still, one can barely make out the ornaments
in the Hassler Fantasia, which are said to be unique for a German
composition of this period (p. xv). Whether or not these signs
are original parts of the text (which seems doubtful), they support
Rampes assertion that this repertory was generally played
with a great many ornaments, most of which were not written down
(p. xvi)—an observation that will be recalled below in evaluating
the Froberger recordings.

3. New Froberger Sources: Two Apographs and an Autograph

3.1 As befits their importance, the two recently discovered apograph
Froberger manuscripts have been issued in sumptuous although quite different
sorts of editions. As yet awaiting similar treatment is the newly uncovered
autograph, which has, however, been described in a sixteen-page color
brochure published as a supplement to the much larger complete catalogue
for Sothebys November 2006 auction (see Maguire).
Any one of these manuscripts would have constituted the most important
Froberger discovery for a century or more; together they will greatly
enrich our understanding of the composer and his works, although not
without raising further questions. In addition to the previously unknown
(and unsuspected) pieces in the autograph, they provide improved texts
for several famous but poorly transmitted works; they also promise to
shed light on the compositional and reception histories of the music.
Moreover, titles and other rubrics in all three manuscripts seem to
bear not only on the programmatic significance of some pieces but on
Frobergers biography. It will take time for scholars to digest
the evidence presented by the three manuscripts, which need to be considered
in the context of other Froberger sources.

3.2 The brochure published by Sothebys includes a detailed physical
description and inventory of the new autograph, in
connection with which the assistance of Peter Wollny is acknowledged
(p. 16). Bound in covers that show the arms of Emperor Leopold I, the
manuscript comprises three sections containing, respectively, six fantasies,
six caprices, and five four-movement suites followed by three one-movement
laments. Entirely new are the first twelve pieces as well as one suite,
a Meditation, and a tombeau. Also new are the titles attached
to some of the previously known pieces. Facsimiles in the brochure show
portions of five pieces, but only the very beginning and very end of
two of the unknown works. These are nevertheless sufficient to establish
the autograph character of the handwriting and the closeness of the
musical texts to those of the Berlin manuscript, SA (for identifications
of such short titles, see the Appendix),
which nevertheless differs in the absence of some accidentals, ties,
and ornament signs.

3.3 One minuscule error occurs in the transcription of the title page—the
one non-autograph portion of the manuscript—where the second of
the dance types contained in the manuscript is actually spelled Chigues,
not Gigues. Whether this could help localize
the handwriting remains to be seen. In addition, although the brochure
describes the manuscript as very faintly dated in a later hand
(p. 3), it does not make clear that this phrase refers to an entry in
faded pencil in the upper right of the title page. This inscription
reads (probably) Anno 1666. The brochures posited
date of ca.1665–1667 is probably based not on this pencil entry
but on the assumption that the manuscript was written after the latest
of the works in it were composed. But the only dates that can be considered
reasonably well established are those of A2021 and the previously unknown
tombeau for Duke Leopold Friederich of Württemberg-Montbéliard,
who died in 1662.

3.4 It is, perhaps, an overstatement that the discovery changes
the course of Froberger studies and, by extension, the history of seventeenth-century
music (p. 4). Nor is it clear that the newly revealed fantasies
and caprices are longer, comprising more sections, than Frobergers
known earlier examples (p. 7). The longest of these new pieces
occupies ten openings, each displaying just two systems of four staves
each. This is the equivalent of just five openings (ten pages) in the
larger format of the Vienna manuscripts, and most of the present pieces
are shorter. Possibly more distinct in style are the new Meditation
and Tombeau for Sibylla and her husband; these are perhaps less restrained,
more toccata-like, than similarly named pieces known previously. But
clearly, evaluation of the new music must await publication.

3.5 In any case, none of the new pieces shows gross differences in style or
form from those previously known. Hence, although obviously of great importance,
the manuscript is unlikely to fundamentally alter our understanding of
the composer or the repertory. Its apparently late date makes it clear
that it is not one of the autograph collections presumed missing from
Vienna (the postulated Libri 1 and 3). Yet it does appear to have
been another compilation of pieces for a member of the Habsburg family—conceivably
Margarita Teresa of Spain, whose marriage to Leopold by proxy in 1666
at Madrid might have been the occasion for which Froberger visited there,
as documented in the title for the new Meditation. Unfortunately the brochure
offers no information about provenance.

3.6 Although the greatest interest naturally attaches to the new autograph,
its discovery does not diminish the importance of the two other sources.
No work is common to all three manuscripts, although four suites and
one lament are shared by the autograph and one of the two recently discovered
copies. The remainder of this discussion therefore focuses on the editions
of the two apograph manuscripts and their musical contents. The first
of these two sources to resurface has become known as both the Stuttgart
and the Bulyowsky (Bulgowsky) manuscript, after its presumed place of
origin and its Slovak copyist, respectively. I will refer to it as Dl,
using the siglum for the library that now houses it (D-Dl).22
Bruce Gustafson has already reviewed the present edition,23 yet it is worth reexamining in relationship to the Berlin manuscript,
which surfaced just as scholars were beginning to digest the significance
of Dl. SA, as I shall call the Berlin source, is one of
the thousands of manuscripts returned by the Ukrainian government in
2001 to the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, a private organization whose music
archive disappeared during World War II.24 The archive had never
been properly catalogued, and its inclusion of an important keyboard
manuscript from the seventeenth century was hardly suspected. Although
the Sing-Akademie has been inconsistent in the past in making its archive
available to scholars and performers, it has served the musical world
well in publishing the present source, which stands out among the thousands
of possibilities not only for its importance but for its size and format,
making it particularly suitable for publication. A catalogue of the
complete collection is now in preparation.

3.7 Five smaller manuscripts in the archive, SA 4441–4445, contain
additional works attributed to Froberger: a praeludium or fantasia,
and four suites (Partien). Although the style is simpler and
later than Frobergers, the playful titles attached to the suites
form a curious counterpart to the more serious ones in SA. The consistent
format of the suites, each comprised of prelude, allemande, courante,
sarabande, double, and gigue, suggests they were planned as part of
a series (the key signatures are modern: F minor, E-flat major, B-flat
major, and E major). Peter Wollny identifies these copies as being in
the hand of the Berlin organist Johann Peter Lehmann (d. 1772), but
there is no evident connection between him and a Berlin manuscript tradition
involving Frobergers contrapuntal works.25

3.8 Alexander Silbiger has already described the most important features
of SA and of the present edition.26 Whereas Dl has been edited in a conventional
scholarly format, with detailed critical apparatus, SA is given in both
facsimile and transcription, but with only cursory textual commentary.27
Both volumes include useful prefaces, and although some will find the
layout of the transcription in the SA volume a little cramped, in principle
both editions are models of their respective kinds. The monochrome photographic
facsimile of SA is extremely clear, indeed easier to read and better
looking than the actual manuscript, at least in the feeble December
light in which I saw it in 2004. The entire editorial apparatus of the
SA volume appears in both German and a competent English translation,
save for a brief list of readings from the manuscript that have been
altered in the transcription.

3.9 Unfortunately, neither volume is entirely satisfactory as an edition,
and because they are predicated on somewhat different editorial principles,
it is exceedingly difficult to compare the texts of the two manuscripts
by studying the two transcriptions. A particular frustration, which
Gustafson noted, is that the edition of Dl distinguishes between original
and editorial ties only in its critical commentary. Indeed, the editor
of Dl, Rudolf Rasch, has generously supplemented the text of the manuscript,
even including an entire movement that is preserved only in a concordance
(the double of the courante in Suite 23).28 In a suite attributed to Poglietti, Rasch has reconstructed faulty readings
as much as possible in the style of the second half of the seventeenth
century (p. 108);29 the results are plausible, but Poglietti
is so little-known and his keyboard music so poorly preserved that any
conclusions about his style must be considered provisional. A more literal
edition of some of the Froberger pieces in Dl has already appeared in
volume 3 of Rampes complete edition, where these appear
as alternate versions of movements published elsewhere in the series.
But, in keeping with Rampes general approach, the unique readings
of these versions are not adequately evaluated, nor could Rampe take
into consideration the more recently discovered concordances in SA.

3.10 Whatever one may think of their methodologies, at least the editions
by Rasch and Rampe appear to be accurate. Unfortunately, the transcription
of SA is not as reliable as one would like. The volume, for which Peter Wolny shares responsibility with the Sing-Akademie, has now appeared
in a second revised issue that has eliminated some but
by no means all of the errors found in the original issue of 2004; only
one entry has been added to the all-too-brief Critical Report
(pp. xiv–xv). Equally regrettable is the failure of the transcription
to distinguish many editorially added ties, accidentals, and even notes,
which appear in normal type.30

3.11 To be sure, the notation of ties and accidentals is especially
problematical in this repertory. Some copyists were evidently quite
slovenly in this respect—but I do not think that this provides
evidence for a standard organists practice in which identical
pitches in the same voice were sustained rather than being struck again
(as claimed on p. xix). The distinction between tied and restruck notes
is a vital expressive resource on keyboard instruments—organs
as well as harpsichords and clavichords. Froberger certainly understood
this, even if some copyists did not. In the allemande of Suite 17, for
example, it makes a difference whether or not one restrikes tenor c'
on the third beat of measure 9; restriking the note makes audible the dissonance
that arises as the alto moves from e' to d'
(the first edition showed an editorial tie in the tenor). On the other
hand, the brisé texture in measure 14 of the same movement
makes it imperative to tie the note g' rather than restriking
it on the third beat, where the arpeggiation of a 6/5-chord begins with
bass E; yet here the edition originally refrained from suggesting
a tie.31 Inasmuch as the corrected
transcription has improved these two readings, it is surprising to find
that similar mistakes remain elsewhere; for instance, one still looks
for consistency in how ties are added (or not) in two parallel passages
in the Tombeau for Blancrocher (mm. 15–16, 18–19).

3.12 Gustafson questioned the wisdom of making such emendations in
an edition based on a single source, especially when emendations are
not clearly identified as such in the printed text.32 But although both copies are relatively
reliable, emendations remain necessary if either edition is to present
a musically coherent text. Especially when a facsimile is also present,
little purpose is served by reprinting its text verbatim in places that
show a coarsening of the composers rhythm, erroneous ties, or
wrong notes and accidentals. The copyists of both manuscripts make certain
characteristic types of errors; alert editing would have eliminated
these more consistently. Those in SA appear to be run-of-the-mill copying
mistakes, mostly of omission (ties, accidentals, and occasional notes
in inner voices). On the other hand, Bulyowsky made frequent errors
of commission, to judge from numerous superfluous accidentals
in Dl. Many of the latter can be interpreted as anachronisms imposed
by a later copyist who was not entirely familiar with Frobergers
harmonic language.33
Bulyowsky was a competent composer with a special interest in exotic
tonalities, as attested by the presence in Dl of his suite in B-flat
minor. He knew what he was writing and might well have added accidentals
where he (wrongly) thought them necessary.

3.13 As a result of these editorial failings, we still lack satisfactory
modern editions for some of the pieces in these two manuscripts. This
applies especially to three laments for which SA provides concordances
to the very faulty texts in Min. 743. Nevertheless, Wollny, who wrote the Preface for the edition of SA, deserves profound thanks for having recognized the significance
of the manuscript and for providing a wealth of detailed information
about the probable copyist, the provenance and contents of the manuscript,
and the background to the extraordinary programmatic titles and rubrics
attached to many movements.34 Froberger scholars attempting to decipher the meanings of the latter
will be especially grateful for the accurate transliteration and translation
of the titles and for Wollnys research into obscure subjects rarely
visited by musicologists, such as the genealogies of minor imperial
nobility and local Rhine river customs and geography.

3.14 On the other hand, as Silbiger has already observed, the volume
provides insufficient information about the physical appearance and
structure of the manuscript itself.35 Yet it may be that little additional information could be extracted
from the manuscript itself; there is no fly leaf or title page, and
I saw no verbal or graphic indications of its origin in my own examination.
Despite the large format, superior paper, and lavish
leather binding (p. xvii), the latter is now badly worn, and much of
the paper is in poor condition. The first leaf (pp. 1–2) is now
detached, as is the next group of pages, comprising an entire fascicle
(pp. 3–10), but all of the compositions present are complete.
Not evident from the facsimile is the wearing of the paper, especially
in the lower right corners; this plus occasional pencil corrections
raises the possibility that the manuscript was used into the nineteenth
century.36
More recent additions are the pencil pagination and bracketed numbering
of the individual pieces, as well as the blue and purple stamps added
in Ukraine.37 Many corrections in ink throughout the manuscript could
be the work of the copyist, but others are unlikely to be his.38 The first twenty pages, bearing six toccatas, are ruled in systems of
6 + 7 staves; this changes to 5 + 5 for the remaining 56 pages, containing
suites and laments. But although the change coincides with the start
of a third fascicle, and various forms of F-clef occur in the course
of the manuscript, all appears to be in the same hand, tentatively identified
by Wollny as that of the Hamburg organist Johann Kortkamp (1643–1721).39 If so, this may be significant in interpreting the unique features of
SA, for Kortkamp was not only a pupil of Weckmann but also a chronicler
(author of the so-called Hamburger Organistenchronik) for
whom certain verbal rubrics in the manuscript might have carried special
interest as historical documentation.

3.15 Other rubrics in SA (some paralleled by entries in the new autograph)
prescribe the use of discrétion in performing many of
the individual movements. In the six toccatas these indications are
coordinated with symbols that evidently indicate where discrétion
in this sense should cease.40 Schott argued that the
term, which could refer either to slow, deliberate tempo, or to rhythmic
freedom, probably signified the latter in Frobergers music.41
In fact, the present rubrics occur so often in pieces that are also
marked lentement—allemandes and laments, in addition to
the passages in the toccatas—that the two meanings may have merged
for the copyist of SA. Mattheson was Schotts source for connecting
the expression with rhythmic freedom; since, as Wollny notes (p. xviii),
Mattheson apparently knew these pieces, if not this very manuscript,
SA (or its Vorlage) might even be the source from which Mattheson
derived his understanding of performance practice in the toccata, which
he discusses in Dervollkommene Capellmeister.42
Why, however, does this manuscript bother marking both the beginnings
and ends of such passages when their boundaries will be obvious to anyone
familiar with the style? The implication is that SA was written by or
for someone too remote from the composer, in time or place, to be completely
conversant with the tradition.

3.16 Also relating to performance is the presence, as in Dl, of somewhat
idiosyncratic ornament signs, which in SA appear uniquely in the gigue
of Suite 9.43 The main sign in question, claimed here to be of Viennese provenance
(p. xix), must stand for an accento or port de voix, perhaps
followed by a pincé. Its presence here, alongside the
signs for tremblements and pincés familiar from
later music, is a further indication that this music was performed with
numerous ornaments, at least by the time SA was written out. The inclusion
of these ornament signs only in particular movements again points to
a pedagogic intention; because the signs are not found in other copies,
it is unlikely that they go back to the composer.

3.17 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the manuscript are its
many new titles and programmatic rubrics, which may add significantly
to the meager information available about the composers biography.
Two opening movements (in Suites 27 and 30) are accompanied by especially
lengthy Beschreibungen, otherwise unknown, that are transcribed
and translated in the preface, with helpful commentary. That for Suite
30 confirms and elaborates upon the laconic title found in Min. 743,
previously the only known source. In Suite 27, Dl identifies the allemande
as nommée Wasserfall, and SA puts to rest speculation
as to what the latter title might have meant, showing that the Wasserfall
was not a geographic phenomenon but a fall into the water by one of
Frobergers companions while crossing the Rhine. Twenty-six Notenfälle,
mentioned by Mattheson in a puzzling comment,44
turn out to be not notes of a scale but as many verbal annotations added
in SA at the foot of the page giving this movement.

3.18 An immediate consequence of this discovery is to invalidate any
association of the title Wasserfall with the anonymous suite
in E-flat that was attributed to Froberger as Suite 29 in
the editions of Schott and Rampe. The Allemande of the latter suite
contains Frobergerian echoes, including an opening quotation from the
Lamento of Suite 12.45 But in light of the anonymous
transmission among pieces by Reinken and Böhm, a north-German origin
seems a better guess.46 The designation Suite 29 should be retired;
the A-minor suite edited by Adler under that title, although including
several movements elsewhere attributed to Froberger, opens with an interesting
but stylistically dubious allemande and must be a later compilation.47

4. The Repertory of the New Sources

4.1 From Suite 29 it is logical to turn to the repertory
of these manuscripts. The twelve new contrapuntal works in the new autograph
must, for the time being, be disregarded, together with its new suite,
meditation, and tombeau. Each of its four remaining suites and one lament
recurs in either Dl or SA but not both, nor in the autographs extant
in Vienna.

4.2 Dl contains 21 suites; following an arrangement found in other
seventeenth-century manuscripts, 14 were copied starting at the front
of the manuscript, the others from the back. The first 13 suites, containing
58 movements, are attributed to Froberger. More precisely, the first
movement in each set of pieces is headed by a roman numeral from I to
XIII, Frobergers name being included in the title of the first
movement (usually in abbreviated form, e.g., XII. | Allem. de
Froberg. for the copy of Suite 15). Any doubt that these sets
of pieces were meant to serve as distinct groupings of movements is
dispelled by the fact that Suites 1 and 15, both in A minor, were copied
consecutively as nos. XI and XII.

4.3 This section of the manuscript ends with a fourteenth suite in
A major, anonymous and unnumbered. This suite is in another hand, and
there is no way of knowing whether the second copyists failure
to maintain Bulyowskys labeling scheme is an indication for or
against Frobergers authorship. Rasch tentatively accepted the
suite as Frobergers, and it is included on a recording of Frobergers
works from the Strasbourg manuscript (see below). Unlike
Suite 29, which at least imitates Frobergers style,
this work seems remote from it.48 But although style analysis can justifiably raise questions about attributions,
it is too subjective to settle them. We simply do not know enough about
the evolution of Frobergers style to be certain that simplistic
or weak movements, such as those making up the present suite, could
not be early or atypical works of his. The same goes for the three unique
movements that Dl includes in Suite 23; these are considered below.
To be sure, were any of these pieces to turn out indeed to be by Froberger,
the fact would be of primarily historical interest; adding them to the
canon of his works would not affect his significance as a composer.

4.4 By contrast, the pieces in SA are all anonymous. But all are elsewhere
attributed to Froberger, whose name might have been present on the missing
title page. Questions have been expressed about Frobergers authorship
of Suite 27 (including the Wasserfall Allemande), as well
as Toccatas 13 and 14,49 but their inclusion in Dl as well as SA establishes Frobergers
authorship beyond reasonable doubt. Moreover, the six toccatas belong
to the group published in 1693 by Bourgeat and also circulating in independent
manuscripts in places as scattered as England, France, Sweden, and Vienna.50

4.5 The Froberger works in the two manuscripts are listed
in Table 1. Before proceeding further
it will be worth considering how best to refer to these pieces. Rampes
edition introduced FbWV numbers, also used in the worklist
accompanying his article on the composer in the new MGG.51 Numbering systems are
never perfect, but it is unwise to replace one by another unless the
advantages of the new system outweigh the confusion caused by abandoning
the older one. Rampes system is no improvement over the century-old
numbering based on the sequence of pieces in Adlers edition.52 Therefore I will retain Adlers
numbers for the toccatas and suites. David Starke, in his pioneering
study,53 found
it useful to designate movements individually, and I will refer, for
instance, to the Allemande of Suite 1 as A1, courantes, sarabandes,
and gigues being designated accordingly.

4.6 Rampe is neverthless right to reconsider the use of the word suite
to refer to groupings of these pieces. The word is not documented in
connection with this repertory prior to Rogers edition (10
Suittes) of 1698. But the concept is implict in the organization
of Dl and SA, not to mention Libro 2 of 1649. Rampes use
of the term partita is no less arbitrary than that of suite,
but as Froberger already used the Italian term to mean movement
(in the general title of the 1649 autograph), it is illogical to apply
it to a sequence of French dances.54

4.7 But did Froberger compose dance movements for inclusion in specific
suites? If instead he wrote them individually, did he later collect
all of them into sets, or did some remain orphans, free to wander from
suite to suite at the whim of copyists?55 Musical parallelisms sometimes imply the grouping of movements, and
in a few suites the courante is derived entirely by a process of variation
from the allemande (as in Suite 1). More frequently one finds extended
parallelisms that fall short of complete movements (as in Suites 3–5),
or briefer parallelisms involving memorable turns of phrase or harmonic
progressions (as in Suite 27). No parallelism can irrefutably establish
that two movements were composed to form part of a group—anybody
could have composed a variation at a later date—but at least it
provides a musical reason for a grouping, which otherwise is based simply
on a common tonality. With Froberger it is mainly the gigues that wander,
in some cases in order to complete early suites that evidently
lacked such movements.56 Froberger may at first
have regarded gigues as less essential to a suite than other movements,
and perhaps he sometimes supplied them improvisationally.57 Some gigues, moreover,
exist in triple- as well as duple-time versions. But it remains unclear
whether he was responsible for moving certain gigues from one suite
to another, or for the triple-time versions G7, G11, G13, and G15 (see
Tables 2a, b, c).58

4.8 One way in which movements wandered is suggested by a remark of
Constantijn Huygens, who sent the lutenist St. Luc a jig by the
late, great Froberger, which I have transcribed for lute. There you
will find some excellent passages and a marvelous ending. I know nothing
of his by heart other than this, but I have taken pains over this piece
and made it my own study, playing it for no one other than myself, as
it is not a taste for every palate.59 Huygens seems to imply that he has learned the piece in his own arrangement,
perhaps writing it down only in order to pass it on to a friend. Although
this may have been an exceptional case, it illustrates the freedom with
which Frobergers music could be treated, as well as a lack of
consideration for the possibility that the Gigue was a fixed movement
in a larger group of pieces.

4.9 The issue of wandering gigues is separate from that of their position
within the suite. That Froberger did consider the suite as an integrated
whole is suggested by a comment in Weckmanns copy of Suite 20
(in the Hintze manuscript), indicating that Froberger by this time was
putting the gigue in second place. But the comment in Weckmanns
manuscript did not necessarily apply to earlier suites, even though
the new autograph does give all the gigues in second place (including
that of Suite 20).60 Some gigues can stand effectively in
either position, but others seem better left in second place, as when
a triple-time gigue concludes with a passage in duple time, the latter
serving as a return to the style of the preceding allemande; if so,
then Rogers re-ordering of Suite 10 (vis-à-vis SA and the
autograph) was a mistake. Suite 18 has a relatively short, slight gigue,
which comes last in Rogers print (and in the D-minor version found
in two English manuscripts); the suite produces a more profound, elegiac
effect when it closes with its relatively powerful sarabande. The gigue
of Suite 20 is entirely in duple time, but near the end it returns to
the style of the allemande, in a passage that SA marks NB avec
discretion, effectively pairing the two movements.

4.10 Although they occasionally disagree on where to put the gigue,
Dl and SA both preserve suites intact, that is with all the movements
that are elsewhere documented as concordances. The only exceptions involve
several wandering gigues in Dl, and this may be a reflection
of that sources relatively early origin, or rather its preserving
what appear to be early works or early versions. Hence both manuscripts,
if not particularly close to the composer, are at least products of
a tradition that understood Frobergers concept of the suite, at
a time when the grouping of pieces into integral sets must have seemed
unusual and was far from being universally respected by copyists. SA
includes the six suites also found in the 1656 autograph (Suites 7–12);
of these Dl has only Suite 11, which it gives in a distinct version.61 On the other hand, Dl
contains seven of the eight suites in Rogers 1698 print (Suites
13–20). SA also contains seven suites that appeared in that edition,
but two of these were already present in the 1656 autograph.

4.11 But despite these grouping concordances between the
new manuscripts and previously known sources, the ordering
of suites in each case is different. Rasch commented (p. 24) on the
apparently systematic choice of keys for the first six suites in Dl
(c-d-e-F-g-a). But the copyist Bulyowski had a special interest in tonal
relations, as witnessed by his own suite in B-flat minor and later publications,
and the ordering of the first six suites could have been his own idea.
SA lacks this hexachordal arrangement of tonalities, and it opens with
six toccatas (as do two of the Vienna manuscripts)—but it cannot
be a coincidence that the toccatas follow the same sequence of keys
as the first six suites (d-G-F-e-a-g). Does this imply pairing of toccata
and suite in performance? No such relationship occurs consistently in
the autographs.62 In the new autograph, the first two groups of pieces share four tonalities,
three of these occupying the same position in each set (1 = a, 2 = e,
6 = F). The fourth common tonality, described in the Maguire inventory
as B-flat major, does not occur in any previously known
Froberger works. The first suite is again in A minor, but thereafter
there is no evident organizing principle other than non-repetition of
a given tonality within a section of the manuscript.

4.12 Nevertheless, SA shares with the new autograph a focus on suites
whose first movements bear titles; these are followed by laments. In
SA, it is apparent from the programmatic titles of their opening movements
that the first half-dozen suites form a group; all of these movements
are described as faite (made) for some reason or at some
place, and five are to be played with discrétion. They
are separated from the next five suites by the single-movement Tombeau
for Blancrocher.

4.13 The final section of SA contains all six suites from the 1656
autograph, in a seemingly random order interrupted by Suite 20 and the
lament for Ferdinand III. Whether or not we include the Tombeau for
Blancrocher in this group, this final portion of the manuscript bears
a double association with the imperial family and with death, as signified
by the presence of what we might call the coronation Suite
11, followed immediately by the lamentation Suite 12. If
the aging Froberger had been contemplating the meaning of fame, fortune,
and fatality, his thoughts might have found expression in the present
selection of pieces. The same holds even more clearly for the new autograph,
which closes with two tombeaux that are closely preceded by two meditations:
contemplations of future deaths that lead to laments for actual ones.

4.14 Inasmuch as six of the last seven suites in SA belong to the autograph
Libro 4, it is tempting to suppose that the manuscripts
first six suites are those of the missing Libro 3. This hypothesis
would not be ruled out by the putative dating of Suites 13 and 27 to
the early 1650s (see below). On the other hand, one would then need
to explain the dedication of Suite 18 to the Duchess of Wirtemberg
well before the time when Froberger is known to have worked for the
Dowager Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg-Montbéliard.63 The choice and ordering
of suites in SA might just as possibly have been a copyists, reflecting
local conditions or even a particular interest specifically in programmatic
pieces. Certainly musicians of the next generation or two were already
aware of this special aspect of Frobergers music, to judge from
references by Kuhnau and Mattheson.64

4.15 In the absence of clear patterns common to other major Froberger
sources in the grouping and ordering of suites, it is impossible to
identify the present pieces as belonging to one of the autograph volumes
whose loss has been hypothesized by Froberger scholars since the nineteenth
century. But perhaps it has been a mistake to assume that the missing
autographs had the same structure as Libri 2 and 4; after
all, the unnumbered autograph of 1658 contains only contrapuntal pieces,
and the new one lacks toccatas. Nor can it be taken for granted that
the groupings and orderings of pieces in the imperial manuscripts had
any sort of permanent or definitive status for the composer. Frobergers
teacher Frescobaldi had issued a series of publications containing somewhat
similar types of pieces, but the contents of some of these books were
substantially revised upon republication.65 The present manuscripts tend to confirm what scholars had already suspected
from previously known sources: that it was also Frobergers practice
to return to finished works, revising them on occasion. Hence it would
not be surprising if he also revised the grouping or ordering of sets
of pieces. But in any case, we do not know that the missing libri contained toccatas and suites at all, or whether manuscripts prepared
for other patrons—such as the one reportedly presented to the
elector of Saxony66—contained the same repertory as
those presented to the emperor, organized by the same principles. Mattheson
was evidently familiar with a lost manuscript that was similar in organization.
But the selection of pieces in any such manuscript could have partially
overlapped that of the imperial autographs; the six toccatas in SA could
be an authentic set prepared by Froberger for some purpose, even though
two of the pieces also occur in the imperial Libro 2.

5. The New Sources: Titles, Programs, and Dates

5.1 It is reassuring that, while providing new and extended titles
for many pieces, none of the new manuscripts directly contradicts any
previously known programmatic rubrics for Frobergers music. On
the other hand, these and other sources give distinct versions for many
titles, and two different pieces are described as having been made
in honor of Duchess Sibylla (A18 in Dl and the new autograph,
A17 in SA).67 A third, the Afligée
(first movement of the suite in F major in the new autograph), was made
at Montbéliard for her (emphasis added). All three
pieces are allemandes, and although the last cannot yet be evaluated,
the relatively heterogeneous nature of the figuration in A17 and A18
might, together with the fairly extended dimensions and sophisticated
style of the following movements in both suites, be taken as characteristic
of Frobergers later works. The Lamentation for Ferdinand
III from Suite 12 is an allemande of the same type, presumably written
shortly after his death in 1654. Even more heterogeneous
is the Allemande of Suite 20 ( for which all three manuscript sources
give the title Meditation faite sur ma mort future; SA adds
that it was written at Paris in 1660). An initial impression of the
new Meditation for Sibylla and the Tombeau for her husband is that both
are also heterogeneous allemandes, containing agitated,
even virtuosic figuration sometimes more characteristic of the free
sections of a toccata than of an allemande. But this is a highly subjective
way of characterizing style, and even with the new autograph we have
precious few other chronological landmarks tying individual pieces to
specific dates.

5.2 Rubrics in both Dl and SA associate Suite 13 with the period around
1652, when Froberger is known to have been in Paris. According to SA,
the allemande was written for the Marquis de Termes (faite pour
remercier Monsieur le Marquis de Termes des faveurs et bien faits de
luy recežs â Paris), evidently the same to whom the dying Blancrocher
commended his children.68 César August de
Pardaillan de Gondrin, marquis de Termes, was first gentleman of the
chamber of Monsieur (Gaston, duc dOrléans), a devious character
if one can believe the account in Tallemant des Réauxs Historiettes.69 This Allemande is relatively restrained in style, retaining the imitative
element present in older ensemble dances and evident in examples from
Frobergers Libro 2 (e.g., A3). The pieces in the latter
book, dated 1649, might have been composed somewhat earlier, but in
any case the use of variation technique and the absence of gigues in
all but one of those suites do look like early traits. If
so, then it is significant that Suite 13 contains a relatively lengthy
imitative gigue, which according to both Dl and SA was called La
rusée mazarinique. The title seems to refer to Cardinal
Mazarins surreptitious return to France on Christmas Eve 1651,
at the end of what historians term his first exile;70 morever, both manuscripts have a rubric dictating that
the cadenza-like passage at measure 18 be played lentement et avec
discretion comme le retour de Mr. le Cardinal Mazarin à Paris.71
It is odd that SA attaches title and rubric to what is probably the
original, duple-time, version of the gigue, whereas Dl includes both
only in its second copy of the same movement, in triple time.72
But in any case we have here another indication that this type of gigue
may indeed be a development of the period after 1649, as suggested above.

5.3 Other titles in SA flesh out the association of Suite 11 with the
imperial family, which was previously evident only in the iconographic
vignettes accompanying the copy in the 1656 autograph, where it precedes
the lament for Ferdinand IV. The title in SA associates A11 with the
election of Ferdinand IV as King of the Romans, that is, as emperor-elect
to succeed his father Ferdinand III (which was not to be); this title
would accord with the eagle that heads the copy in Libro 4. But
SA describes the Courante of the same suite as written for the birthday
of the jeune princesse imperiale,73
and the Sarabande for the coronation of Eleonor Gonzaga as empress;
do these titles actually accord with the sword and scepter that precede
the respective movements in the autograph? The latter, unlike SA, places
the Gigue second and heads it with an orb; SA has no title for this
movement. These discrepancies suggest some imprecision, if not an evolution,
in exactly what these pieces represented. Especially as Dl seems to
give a distinct, earlier version of the Allemande, caution is appropriate
before assuming that the dates of the events named in SA coincide with
dates of composition for the movements of Suite 11, even if it is true
that Froberger was in Regensburg for the coronation in 1653.74

5.4 Hence I am not entirely convinced by Wollnys precise fixing
of the Wasserfall incident to Midsummers Eve (June
24) 1654, although his general argument is certainly sound, superseding
earlier speculation.75 Needless to say, one
can be even less certain of the date of A27, the piece that represents
the event musically. Certainly, however, the discovery of the annotated
copy in SA, with its twenty-six Notenfälle, confirmed
the earlier guess of Rasch and Dirksen that this was the piece described
by Mattheson and alluded to obliquely by Kuhnau in 1700.76 Included in SA alongside other programmatic allemandes, A27 would appear
to be another product of Frobergers journey through France, England,
and the Netherlands, during the period 1650–3. Perhaps Froberger
even counted his eventful ferry crossing as one of the three blinderungen
of which he complained to Kircher, although the latter expression would
apply literally only to the robberies lamented in two other pieces also
found in SA: the Lamentation ce que jai été
volé (A14 in G minor) and the Plainte of Suite
30 (in A minor). If the remaining suites from this part of SA also derive
from those travels, then the latter would have seen some mountain climbing
and a visit to Stuttgart as well. But this may be to hang too much speculation
on a few intentionally tantalizing titles.77

5.5 Wollny suggests, on the basis of his dating of Suite 27, that a
shift of the gigue from last to second place in a suite occurred in
the summer of 1654 (p. xxii). But although the Gigue of this suite
still comes last in SA, the copy of the same suite in Dl has the Gigue
second. The same discrepancy arises in Suites 11, 16, and 17; this is
particularly puzzling since, as noted below, Dl generally seems to give
later versions. Wollny admits that his argument would hold only if Froberger
did not use both orderings simultaneously; it would also require that
Froberger composed these suites as ordered sequences. In the case of
Suite 27, there is good reason for thinking all four movements were
composed at the same time, yet I wonder whether it could be as late
as 1654. All four movements are relatively restrained in style, perhaps
less imaginative than the others of SA. There is one lovely moment,
when the treble suddenly leaps up to g'' from
the middle register, but this occurs in both the Allemande (m. 10) and
the Sarabande (mm. 12–13), the type of parallelism associated
with the suites of Libro 2.78
The Gigue, although not particularly short, is an unintensive, homophonic
piece in triple time, although this could also be said of G30 in the
suite that follows in SA.

5.6 Of course, one cannot assume a linear development in the style
of any composer. Suites 11 and 27 might be relatively plain works, or
simply weak ones, that nevertheless postdate more complex or imaginative
ones. It would not be surprising if a composer worn out by long, difficult
years of travel were to relax in a few pieces into a relatively undemanding
manner. But although there now seems little question as to the authorship
of Suite 27, it remains unclear exactly what to make of the titles attached
to this and other pieces. Even something seemingly as precise as SAs
dating of the Meditation (A20)—Paris, May 1, 1660—cannot
be accepted uncritically.79 Would this have been
the date when Froberger first wrote it down, the date when he prepared
a fair copy, or simply a date that he attached for some private reason
to a piece already composed? Even if the composer originally attached
titles and dates to pieces in a straightforward fashion, there remains
the possibility of imprecision in transmission, especially if the matter
recorded in titles and other annotations was initially preserved by
oral tradition. The latter possibility is raised by the fact that Dl,
which in general appears to give early readings, lacks detailed rubrics,
whereas SA is rich in them. If supposedly autobiographical pieces like
the Plainte and the Wasserfall received
titles after the fact, not to mention detailed programmatic analyses,
then the precise datings that have been suggested for some pieces would
become even less plausible.80

6. The New Sources: Textual Criticism

6.1 However the titles may ultimately be interpreted, it is already
clear that the three manuscripts offer substantially improved texts
for many works. More importantly, Dl and SA offer fresh perspectives
on the origins and early dissemination of Frobergers toccatas
and suites. Although the details of textual criticism in these pieces
are tedious, only through careful consideration of each work can a picture
begin to emerge of when and in what form Froberger first composed these
pieces and how they originally circulated. The issue is of special interest
as these may be among the earliest keyboard suites composed as such.

6.2 The text in Dl for Suite 19, previously known only from the Amsterdam
prints, is a clear improvement, as are Dls readings for Suites
15 and 18, which represent distinct versions or states for these works.
It is therefore of great interest that these are the three suites which
Dl shares with the new autograph.81 It seems unlikely to be coincidental that Dl designates
Suites 15 and 19 as ex autographo, and that Suite 18 has
similar titles in both sources. Van Asperen (paragraphs
5.3–7) reports that the two sources are close in their actual readings but doubts that Dl was copied directly from an autograph—and especially not the recently discovered one, in view of a number of apparently later readings preserved in Dl.

6.3 Similar questions arise in connection with the two works common
to SA and the new autograph. Although the first movement of Suite 20
has been known for some time in the reliable copy by Weckmann (in the
Hintze manuscript), the Amsterdam prints were, again, the only previously
known integral sources for the suite. In the opening movement, the Meditation
sur ma mort future, the new autograph shows two mordents in measure
13 that are lacking in both Weckmanns copy and SA (as is evident
from the facsimile in the brochure,
p. 8). SAs omission of a number of ties is clearly an idiosyncrasy
of its copyist, yet the unique inclusion of the words â Paris
1 Maÿ Anno 1660 must be significant. Although the three sources
are close, their divergences indicate that they descend independently
from at least one other lost autograph.

6.4 A comparable situation exists in the case of the lament in F minor
for Ferdinand III. SA already furnished a coherent text, replacing that
of Min. 743, which in a few places is almost incomprehensible; now the
autograph promises to provide a few improved readings, albeit under
a different title (Tombeau rather than Lamentation).
It had already been evident to most editors that the omission of one
accidental in both SA and Min. 743 at the beginning of the lament was
an oversight; Rampe, nevertheless, lists the work as being in F major
in his work-list in MGG (as the Maguire brochure obliquely notes,
p. 7). Whether the autograph will supply
more substantial improvements or corrections to the text remains to
be seen.

6.5 Perhaps an even more significant question, however, concerns the
origin of the faulty texts in the Amsterdam prints, Min. 743,
and other sources. The question is especially urgent in the case of
pieces for which we still lack autographs. It would be a mistake to
underestimate the capabilities of incompetent scribes to corrupt a good
text. Yet there is reason to suspect that the markedly inferior texts
in some sources derive ultimately from autographs other than those used
for SA and Dl. In particular, SA gives not only a better text but a
distinct version in the Tombeau for Blancrocher. The implication is
that some copyists had access to autograph drafts, not fair copies;
the former would have been harder to read, apart from giving early versions.

6.6 Whereas Dl may descend from fair copies in the case of Suites 15,
18, and 19, this may not have been true for other works. Dl and SA together
improve upon previously known sources for Suites 16 and Suite 27 (including
the Wasserfall Allemande). But here and elsewhere the musical
texts of Dl and SA represent quite different traditions. On the whole,
as Wollny notes (p. xix), SA seems to give later readings, close to
the extant autographs and to the early printed editions (where concordances
exist). Dl, on the other hand, sometimes transmits versions that seem
to predate the extant autographs. These circumstances might reflect
the origin of SA as a first- or second-generation copy from revised
autograph scores, that of Dl as a less direct descendant of individual
autograph drafts.82 Indeed, the filiational status of both
sources grows somewhat murkier as one examines more closely the texts
of individual movements.

6.7 That some sources preserve versions of pieces either earlier or
later than those in the Vienna autographs is not news; indeed, Rampes
edition contains numerous alternate versions. Yet many of what have
been presented as early or revised versions look more like faulty or
arbitrarily altered texts.83
This is as true for Dl as other manuscripts, such as the Grimm tablature.
But because Dl also contains apparently reliable texts, close to those
in other sources (including SA and the autographs), and because its
score format and provenance appear to place it relatively close to the
composer, its alternate readings are worthy of careful consideration.

6.8 The readings in question range from details (such as alternate
accidentals) to the halving of note values in some triple-meter pieces
and the substitution or addition of entire movements. In a few cases
one can confidently speak of alternate versions, in the sense of a movement
that has been thoroughly reworked, whether by the composer or a later
musician; such is the case with sarabandes and gigues in altered meter
or note values (for the latter, see Table
3). More often, however, one gets the impression of small changes
in rhythm, voice leading, or melody, possibly made at various times.
Such alterations, which are ubiquitous in seventeenth-century keyboard
music generally, are better described as refinements than
revisions.

6.9 Not unexpectedly, with Froberger the greatest number of refinements
occur in the allemandes and laments, which are the longest and most
complex of the suite movements.84 In addition to melodic embellishment, these include alterations of rhythm,
typically from straight to dotted or Lombardic, and the
clarification or supplementation of imprecise notation, usually to convey
details of brisé style (the breaking of chords, notated
as a pseudo-contrapuntal texture). Many of these changes resemble the
sorts of alterations that a practiced player presumably made improvisatorily.85
The existence of such refinements suggests that Froberger would return
to completed scores to bring their notation into closer alignment with
actual performing practice, especially in movements or passages played
à discrétion. Yet Froberger reportedly withheld some of
his music from dissemination precisely because no one could play them
without having heard the composer himself execute them. If so, then
it is possible that many refinements were set in notation not by Froberger
but by others seeking to preserve his manner of performance.86

6.10 Yet even if the aging Froberger did despair of accurately notating
his works, this might have been only because he had found that, despite
his best efforts, his music continued to receive insensitive or overly
literal performances. As he contemplated his mortality—a situation
vividly represented by the Meditation (A20)—he might have doubted
the possibility of passing his musical legacy on to anyone; yet he did
not necessarily hold the same view throughout his life. The detailed
indications in SA for the use of discretion, including symbols
marking the points where it ceases to be relevant, point to a pedagogical
tradition stemming either directly from Froberger or from pupils and
acquaintances such as Weckmann or an unidentified German musician mentioned
by Huygens.87 As the latter was reportedly working
in Denmark by 1668, we should be wary of too assiduously speculating
about transmission through known musicians like Weckmann; those copyists
and composers whose names we know probably represent only the tip of
an iceberg.

6.11 Tangible evidence for this tradition includes the numerous German
tablature sources, whose relationships and provenance have yet to be
thoroughly worked out. They include, for example, a tablature copy of
Toccata 14 dated as early as 1653, which would fit nicely with the postulated
chronology for the first six suites in SA, if it derives from an autograph
Vorlage.88 Variants in this copy, although not pointing to a distinct
version or even to refinements, are nevertheless sufficiently numerous
to suggest that already by this date Frobergers texts had gone
through several generations of copies, perhaps including transcription
into tablature. Whether Froberger himself used tablature must remain
open; variants characteristic of tablature copies, such as octave displacement
of individual pitches, occur in surviving tablature copies as well
as in scores such as Dl. But the relatively poor quality of the tablature
copies implies that, if they are not transcriptions, then like some
of the copies in Dl they derive from autograph drafts in which corrections
or refinements sometimes made details hard to read, resulting in clusters
of slightly different readings at certain points. Drafts of this type
might have been typical of Frobergers autographs, the fair copies
now in Vienna and the lost manuscript reportedly presented to the elector
of Saxony having represented exceptions.

6.12 Especially if Froberger had grown discouraged in his later years,
we can imagine that he would have had little incentive to put his old
drafts into better order. Throughout his adult life he must have possessed
a substantial inventory of compositions, only some of which would have
been completely and precisely notated. Some, perhaps most, might have
remained in his head for long periods before being written down, and
even then not necessarily in complete or stable texts. Selecting and
copying pieces in clear, revised texts would have entailed significant
effort and some expense (for ink and paper), and might have occurred
only for specific reasons, such as a response to a commission or for
presentation to a prospective patron. The unusually neat, systematic
appearance and organization of the autographs, so distinct even from
other imperial presentation manuscripts such as Pogliettis, were
not necessarily typical of Frobergers own materials. Like Bach
and other composers whose practices are better documented, he might
well have entered some revisions unsystematically into different manuscripts
of the same movement, at various times and without regard for whether
he had done so in another copy of the same work.

6.13 Wollny may be right in his view that the six toccatas in SA, like
Bourgeats printed editions of the same works, derive from revised
autograph master copies.89
But in the two toccatas also found in the 1649 autograph, later sources
add only a few common refinements.90 These occur chiefly in the free sections of the toccatas, where any
competent player might have embellished Frobergers original—conceivably
on the basis of having heard Froberger perform the music with unnotated
alterations. Hence the origin of the distinctive readings in these sources
must remain uncertain, although they certainly reflect performance practices
of the late seventeenth century.

6.14 In the six suites of the 1656 autograph, also present in SA, I
am even less certain that SA definitely contains the original
versions (ursprüngliche Fassungen, Wollny, p.
xix), or even what that latter expression might mean in this context.
It is true that SA is notated somewhat less explicitly than the autograph,
lacking a number of necessary ties, dots of prolongation, and even some
notes for the inner voices. But SA also shows refinements in some movements.91
In Suites 8 and 10, which also appear in the Amsterdam prints, SA is
generally closer to the latter, although the prints give the gigues
in the final position. Suite 11, however, must have had a distinct compositional
history; not only does SA give a less refined version than the autograph,92
but this is the one suite from Libro 4 also to appear in Dl,
in a version that seems even earlier.93
That Dl might indeed transmit an early version of a work from the 1656
autograph is confirmed by its relatively unrefined copy of G7 (attached
to Suite 23). These discrepancies are particularly troubling in Suite
11, whose unique titles in SA would connect it with events in the life
of the imperial family. Corresponding indications are entirely lacking
in Dl, raising the question of when the titles came to be attached to
these pieces.

6.15 The situation is even less clear for the remaining suites. The
uneven quality of the texts published in the Amsterdam prints was a
sign that these descended from sources of various types; Dl reinforces
the impression that Frobergers music circulated in texts of greatly
varying clarity, authority, and origin. For four suites (14, 17, 19,
and 20), Dl and SA give texts relatively close to the early editions,
which here are relatively good; on the other hand, Dls readings
are more refined for Suites 15 and 16.94 For Suite 18, where the
prints give a poor text, Dls text is more accurate and in at least
a few places more refined, especially so if one considers the halving
of the note values in the Sarabande to be a subsequent refinement. Yet
the print has ornament signs and a rare piano marking not
in the manuscript.95 On the other hand, the
printed text for Suite 13 is relatively good, and SA is close to it.96
Here Dl gives a distinct version, whether earlier or later is hard to
say.

6.16 The problem of Suite 13 is especially maddening because it is
one of Frobergers greatest suites (recognized as such by being
placed first in the Amsterdam prints), and, as noted earlier, SA and
Dl provide particularly interesting rubrics for it. Dl gives some passages
of Suite 13 in more elaborate form, others simpler (at least rhythmically),
and still others with alternative voice leading.97
The Sarabande, in particular, shows what look like refinements: its
note values are half those of SA and other sources, the initial chord
is broken as a written-out downward arpeggio, and there is a startling
but effective chromatic harmony in measure 17. Yet this version of the Sarabande
lacks the written-out petite reprise found in SA and the prints,
and it avoids the low note AA. Froberger used 3/4 notation only
once in the autograph suites, and the one-flat signature throughout
the suite in Dl is certainly an anachronism, leading to at least one
unlikely melodic augmented second (Allemande, mm. 4–5). All of
this must cast some doubt over Frobergers responsibility for this
version of the suite, including its most remarkable feature, an alternate,
triple-time version of the Gigue that immediately follows the more familiar
version in common time.

6.17 Dl and SA preserve four more suites that are found in neither
the autographs or the early prints. Only one of these, Suite 27, is
in both Dl and SA, where their differences conform to the pattern of
Suite 13: Dl gives faulty accidentals but also alternate versions of
some passages.98 For Suites 23 and 28,
Dl likewise gives texts that on the whole seem more correct than those
previously available, but which still contain outright errors alongside
musically distinctive readings. On the other hand, for Suite 30, as
well as the two laments, SAs text is close to but more accurate
than that of the only previously known source, Min. 743;99 it is striking that these two late manuscripts
preserve so many programmatic rubrics.

6.18 Suites 23 and 28 resemble a number of the other uncollected
suites in containing doubles as well as detached or wandering
movements (see Table 2c and Table
4). Whether Froberger was responsible for composing all of these movements,
or for placing them in suites, has been a recurring question; Dl adds
to the repertory of such movements. Prior to the discovery of Dl, Suite
23 in E minor already had the greatest number of sources; for this work
Dl gives a significantly different text, concluding with an early version
of G7, for which the problematical Grimm tablature substitutes the triple-time
version G23. Hence for this suite Dl relates to Grimm as it does to
the Amsterdam editions in the case of Suite 15. Both works might have
been early suites originally lacking gigues, which were later added
either at the discretion of copyists or according to some verbal directive
of the composers (such as occurs in the Hintze copy of Suite 20).

6.19 Suite 28 in A minor is a more obscure work, and Dl is the first
source to give it in what would now be termed complete form,
including a previously unknown Courante and new doubles for the latter
and the Allemande. Dl also attaches the wandering G30 at
the end; the only other source with a gigue, Bauyn, has a different
one, after the Allemande.100 Are all of these movements
by Froberger? The Courante is derived from the Allemande, but although
in both movements the first half contains seven measures, the second
half of the Allemande is eight measures long, whereas that of the Courante
contains only six. The shortening of the second half is achieved by
omitting the equivalent of one measure (mm. 8b–9a) and compressing
three later measures into two (measures 12–14 of the Allemande correspond
with measures 11–12 of the Courante).

6.20 Froberger did comparable things in the suites of the 1649 autograph,
where the courantes, although derived in whole or in part from the allemandes,
are never direct, measure-for-measure variations of the latter; they
include a movement with a shortened second half (C2). But
the present Courante seems to lose its way in measure 11, where a phrase
ends prematurely, and the penultimate measure of each half is awkward
and unimaginative.101 Seventeenth-century
courantes sometimes contain odd, seemingly inconsequential phrasing,
and it would be wrong to rule out Frobergers authorship of this
movement because its style strikes a modern listener as inept. The Courante
includes an instance of the repeated-note upbeat (to m. 6) that also
occurs in A1 (mm. 5, 9) and in Dls version of C11; perhaps this
was a genuinely Frobergian mannerism that the composer later abandoned
as ungraceful. A dotted version of this repeated-note upbeat occurs
in the new Afligée and Tombeau (nos. 25 and 35 in
X), both presumably late works. Still, if C28 is indeed Frobergers,
it must be an early effort that he later abandoned, and the source that
the Bauyn coypist used might have omitted it with the composers
blessing.

6.21 Similar things have been said about the doubles of this and other
suites, but Silbiger argues against dismissing them too quickly, for
the doubles, where attached to a given movement, are always the same
ones, even in sources as far removed as a French score (Bauyn) and a
German tablature (Grimm).102
Still, the only assuredly authentic variation movements by Froberger
are the partite on the Mayerin in Libro 2 (that is, Suite
6), one of which is a courante with a double. The latter somewhat resembles
the early lute doubles in the restrained character of the variation;
the other partite are reminscent of the various types of keyboard
cantus firmus setting composed in the earlier seventeenth century. Where
did this style of double come from? Few if any French examples can be
dated to the first half of the seventeenth century, when they might
have provided models for Froberger.103
Were Froberger and other keyboard players already playing such variations
in the 1630s or early 1640s? Frescobaldi, Bull, Scheidt, and other composers
furnished antecedents, but their variation pieces are somewhat different
in character from the doubles in the Froberger sources. The latter more
or less resemble the partite on the Mayerin, yet sometimes, as
in the new doubles for Suite 28 offered by Dl, the apparent desire to
maintain a constant flow of small note values leads to somewhat vapid
strumming.104

6.22 In this light it is striking that the A-major suite preserved
anonymously in Dl and in the Stoos manuscript also has doubles for all
but its Gigue.105 Although the Courante is not derived from the Allemande, the second
halves of the two movements are closely parallel harmonically, making
a striking turn toward C-sharp minor. A similar relationship holds for
the Allemande and Gigue of Suite 18, for which Frobergers authorship
is not seriously open to question. Yet the Gigue of the A-major suite
consists entirely of broken-chord figuration unknown in Frobergers
attributed works. If the suite really is an early work of his, one would
not expect it to include a gigue, and at least the latter movement is
probably by a substantially later composer. Yet the first three dance
movements also contain more sequences than one would expect in a mature
work by Froberger; this is especially true of the Sarabande. Many of
Frobergers sarabandes, like this one, consist of a song-like sixteen-bar
double period—two symmetrical halves of eight measures each.106
But it is a type that remained popular in Germany, and it is suspicious
that the arpeggiations in its double are as schematic as those in the
Gigue.

6.23 Suspicions of a later hand must also attach to Dls triple-time
version of G13. As with other alternate triple-time gigues, its concordances
give it as a wandering or a detached movement.107 Rasch takes it to be the original version
(p. xxvii), but one reason adduced for this is no longer valid, as its
special programmatic title is attached in SA to the version
in duple meter.108
There are musical reasons as well for doubting the triple-time version
is earlier, for the version notated in duple meter already alternates
between duplet and triplet divisions of the beat. The triple-time version
is metrically homogeneous, entirely lacking the rhythmic subtlety of
the duple version. Yet the triple-time version gives the first three
entries of the subject in different rhythmic forms; only with the third
(soprano) entry does it settle into the form of the subject that will
be repeated for the remaining three entries. No other gigue attributed
to Froberger shows such instability in its opening subject, which therefore
seems unlikely to derive from him.109 The subject is an embellished version of that of Ennemond Gautiers
La Poste, a piece transmitted as both an allemande and a
duple-time gigue—not that this has any obvious bearing on the
rhythmic interpretation of either piece.

6.24 Rampe has accepted not only the anonymous movements and unica from Dl but many other previously rejected pieces from German sources
such as Grimm. He offers a list of criteria of authorship,
but these consist almost entirely of simple stylistic features that
he takes to be typical [his quotation marks] of Frobergers
compositional technique and personal style. Among these features
are written-out trills starting on the lower auxiliary,
or an opening on the tonic that then proceeds at once
to the subdominant or dominant and then back to the tonic
before continuing.110 Clearly these features are too generic to be used to determine authorship;
even Rampe admits that works by other composers sporadically
employ the same features. It is likely that several of the more doubtful
suites—such as Suites 23 and 24, which are preserved (at least
partially) in more copies than most others—are indeed early works
of Froberger, perhaps including their doubles. But what this tells us
primarily is that it took a while for Froberger to find the distinctive
voice that sounds so much more clearly in the better-attributed compositions.

6.25 If questions can be raised about the new movements
in Dl, how sure can we be about the new titles and annotations
in both Dl and SA? The independence of the two sources inspires confidence
where concordances exist. Where Dl gives alternate titles or rubrics,
these tend to be much shorter and less formal, implying closeness to
a aural rather than a written tradition. Made-up words such as Wasserfall
and montecidium were evidently part of that tradition; these
might have been understood within the composers immediate circle,
but they would have become meaningless to others without some form of
explanation. Hence it may not be a coincidence that only later sources,
notably SA and Min. 743, contain extended programs and titles. These,
like the discretion markings particularly prevalent in SA,
might have been written for the benefit of pupils, or simply to preserve
the tradition. But if so, then, like the interpretive annotations added
by nineteenth-century music editors, they raise the question of how
accurately they preserve the composers own views.

7. Froberger Recordings

7.1 Questions raised above in connection with editions come up again
as one listens to these three recent recordings of music by, or attributed
to, Froberger. It goes without saying that a poor text can be played
beautifully, and that faulty readings or anachronistic performance practices
can be engaging and even musically convincing when used with conviction
and originality. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how many wrong or
nonsensical notes a performance can tolerate, whether they derive from
slips of the finger or of an editor. And since one reason for listening
to old music is to get a taste or understanding of the artistic possibilities
present in past traditions, it is perfectly legitimate to consider to
what degree a given practice is historical or a modern invention. The
latter will be my primary consideration as I discuss three recordings,
all of which are full of merits when taken on their own terms, and worth
having for anyone seriously interested in Frobergers music.

7.2 In European music, there is a fundamental divide between repertories
whose performance practices are well documented and those which are
not. The divide falls roughly around 1700, which marks the beginning
of a period from which we have many more detailed treatises and other
verbal sources, as well as far greater quantities of original instruments
and useful iconography. Frobergers keyboard works lie just on
the far side of this division, even though, like Lullys operas,
they continued to be performed well into the eighteenth century. We
have much better information about the instruments, techniques, and
interpretive traditions that would have been used during the latter
period, as opposed to during the period when these pieces were first
written. Most harpsichordists play this music on instruments (or copies)
that, even if originally built in the seventeenth century, were fundamentally
altered in the eighteenth; their ideas about touch, articulation, tempo,
and innumerable other aspects of harpsichord performance will have been
shaped by a consensus that, rightly or wrongly, has emerged over the
past few decades as to the most effective (if not entirely authentic)
way of playing music by J. S. Bach, François Couperin, and their
contemporaries.

7.3 Most performers are at least vaguely aware of these circumstances,
and therefore approach the performance of seventeenth-century music
with a sense that it is open to greater flexibility or experimentation
than later music. Yet the three recordings under consideration, although
differing in important respects, tend on the whole to reflect a late-twentieth-century
consensus regarding the performance of eighteenth-century keyboard music,
rather than a deeply original or creative grappling with the problems
of seventeenth-century music. This last statement is not a judgment
of the artistic achievement of these performers, which is a separate
issue. It simply means that these recordings give us Frobergers
music as seen through a double-paned window whose glass contains shades
from both the early eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries.

7.4 The performer of Frobergers keyboard music faces many decisions.
The choice and set-up of the instrument or instruments is fundamental,
influencing subsequent decisions such as how to tune it, what registrations
to use, how much ornamentation and embellishment to add, and more generally
with what degree of literality to treat the notation. This last is crucial,
not only because Froberger uses few ornament signs (only the occasional
t and mordent), but because his scores contain heavy chords
and repeated notes in places where one would not expect them in later
harpsichord music; should one add ties, break the chords, or simply
play the music as written? More specialized questions arise in specific
pieces: for instance, should one add petites reprises at the
ends of movements, and if so should they involve a switch to a softer
manual? Should gigues notated in common or cut time be played in compound
triple meter?

7.5 These are among the traditional subjects of performance-practice
research, but one even more basic, though less often mentioned, has
to do with the players basic approach to the instrument: how are
notes struck and released? In other words, what shall be the general
character of touch and articulation? Should it be more vocal or more
instrumental; that is, should downbeats as a rule be preceded by strong
articulations (as is the rule in modern organ and harpsichord playing)?
From the players answers to these questions will flow decisions
about ornaments, fingering, tempo, and ultimately the whole expressive
character of the performance.

7.6 I am not aware of any historically authentic answers to these questions,
for we do not seem to know enough about how stringed keyboard instruments
of the mid-seventeenth-century were set up—that is, how a musician
such as Froberger expected them to be tuned, how their dampers and plectra
were cut, and the like. I think, however, that we can be fairly certain
that the instruments would have sounded rather unlike the ones heard
on these recordings. For instance, the modern predilection for highly
articulate playing is made possible by todays highly efficient
dampers, yet there have been convincing arguments to the effect that
historical preferences were for dampers that left notes partially ringing,
creating an aura somewhat like the after-ring of notes on a harp or
lute. This does not rule out the possibility of sharply articulating
certain notes, but it does suggest that the generally clean sort of
articulation employed here (especially in quick movements) would have
been a rarity in the seventeenth century. I wonder in particular about
the very common cadence formula in which a 4–3 suspension resolves
at the last possible moment, the dissonant fourth being written as a
dotted note, the resolution (third) as a mere eighth or sixteenth (as
throughout S17). The three players nevertheless make a silence darticulation
after the short note in most cases, which may accord with what a violinist
of the period did, but not a singer.

7.7 All three performers understand a need for adding ornamentation,
which includes not only trills, mordents, coulés, and
other small figures, but also little passages leading from a cadence
back to the beginning of a repeated section, and even entire movements
played as preludes to suites that lack them. Doubles found in the sources
are sometimes used to provide varied reprises, and in a few sarabandes
the embellishments added by the performers on repeats practically constitute
doubles as well. Yet, particularly with the smaller ornaments, I often
wonder whether I am hearing figures of the eighteenth as opposed to
the seventeenth century. Earlier sources on ornamentation—mostly
vocal, but including ornament tables for lute and keyboard books—place
great store in accents, often played before or even straddling
the beat; these connect tones rather than emphasizing downbeats. The
same sources suggest that trills (which Froberger, following the Italian
tradition, might have called tremoletti) did not necessarily
start on the upper note or on the beat. The players seem aware of these
alternate possibilities, but on the whole I do not think their approaches
to ornamentation differ significantly from what they would use in eighteenth-century
music.

7.8 All three employ more or less historical instruments, Rampe including
organ and clavichord for several selections, alongside a harpsichord
which, as in Verlets recording, is ostensibly a seventeenth-century
type. Yet, at least as recorded, the actual sounds of these harpsichords
do not strike me as very distinctive, perhaps because they have been
rebuilt or set up in ways that assimilate them to more familiar eighteenth-century
types. Rampe and Rémy advertise their use of meantone and unequal
temperaments, but it is Verlet who goes the furthest in this regard,
using a tuning that leaves some pieces, especially Suite 19 in C minor,
quite sour in many places, especially those involving A-flats, which
are simply too low. Many modern harpsichordists have trained themselves
to tolerate grossly unequal half-steps and truly dissonant diminished
fourths and other intervals, which they understand as expressive. But
beyond a certain point such things become distracting, and they are
historically suspect in light of the preference for equal temperament
allegedly expressed by Frescobaldi, Frobergers teacher.111 The continuing experimentation
throughout the Baroque with split keys and sophisticated temperament
systems implies an effort to avoid out-of-tune intervals; arguments
relating tuning to affect date only from the later eighteenth
century.

7.9 The real proof of these recordings, of course, is in the playing.
All three performers find musically effective solutions to the questions
listed above, whether or not historically authentic. Verlets idiosyncratic
program includes only two complete suites (19 and 14), but these are
among the great ones (Suite 19 emerging as such in the improved text
of Dl).112
Her instrument, although no longer really a 1624 Ruckers, nevertheless
sounds a little more like a seventeenth-century instrument than the
harpsichords on the other recordings.113 Arbitrary elements—not
necessarily foreign to the spirit of this music—include the reordering
of movements in Suite 14 to place the gigue second (undocumented in
any source), and some equally undocumented but not ineffective accidentals.114 I find the temperament
alienating if not disfiguring, especially in the Lamentation of
Suite 14. But the music is played with the freedom it seems to demand,
even if the tempos tend to be rather phlegmatic—grotesquely so
in C14, which is played as if it were a sarabande grave.

7.10 Rémys recording of the Strasbourg manuscript,
that is, Dl, includes the thirteen suites by Froberger as well as the
anonymous one in A major. The packaging includes three pages of very
personal thoughts by the performer as well as extensive notes
on the source by Rasch. Rémys Gedanken are really
a historical fantasy inspired by his personal examination of the manuscript;
he asserts that Froberger had the manner of a prince and
was inclined to melancholia—perhaps, but at Montbéliard
he also enjoyed playing cards with the servants,115 and from the account
of Blancrochers death it would appear he was not averse to carousing.

7.11 Because it is presented as a recording of a specific manuscript,
this CD might have given the pieces in the order of Dl and otherwise
adhered to its text. Yet the suites are re-ordered, and the non-Froberger
portion of the source is omitted. Presumably this was thought to create
a better program, but the overwhelming preponderance of minor keys (ten
of fourteen suites) and the restriction to a single genre make it impossible
to come up with an effective sequence; these two CDs are best not listened
to in one sitting. Regardless of whether Rémy worked without
benefit of Raschs edition or merely followed his own readings,
it is interesting to hear C13 without the second half of measure 2, which
Rasch added on the basis of other sources. At first I assumed, with
Rasch, that its omission in Dl was a simple copying error, but given
that Suite 13 as a whole appears here in a distinct version, one must
allow the possibility that this is a legitimate early reading, even
though it disrupts the 6/4 meter. Elsewhere, however, one hears unlikely
chromaticisms and other anomalies, over and above those that Rasch allowed
to stand.116 Rémy also leaves out the double for C23, which Rasch added to
his edition from the Grimm tablature; he also leaves out the first (duple-time)
version of G13, but this is evidently because he believes that the second
(triple-time) copy represents its intended performance practice.

7.12 Insofar as Rémy is presenting a manuscript as opposed to
works, we might have here a sort of experiment in performance
practice, a recreation of some historical performance of the source,
warts and all. But this particular performance also includes plenty
of liberties, such as the substitution of one closing formula for another
(as in C18, m. 7). Because his harpsichord evidently lacks a short octave,
Rémy also adjusts sonorities such as the first chord in C11,117 and he adds some imaginative embellishments for the sarabandes (e.g.,
S17 in F major). Thus I am disappointed by the relatively staid approach
to the allemandes, although Rémy might now play these somewhat
differently, given what we know from SA about the possible significance
of the titles in A27 and A17. He plays the quick movements more energetically,
but perhaps unduly so in those gigues which are notated in common time.
These are all assimilated to triple meter, yielding perfectly
musical results. Yet I find none of these gigues as exciting as those
that are actually notated in triple meter (such as G30, here as the
second movement of Suite 1).

7.13 Silbiger long ago noted that turning these gigues into triple
time requires that one apply a number of arbitrary conventions.118 It also lowers the
general level of rhythmic intensity in movements such as G11 and G14
that consist mainly of alternating long and short notes (triplet versions
of the latter containing less tension than dotted ones). Moreover, Rémys
triplet rendition of G18 results in the omission of a beat from the
first measure.119
As interesting as it may seem to rewrite the rhythm of these movements,
it is more of an artistic challenge to make something musical out of
a movement such as G17 that consists mainly of dotted rhythms. An effective
tempo will probably be somewhat slower than that taken here on the basis
of eighteenth-century gigues and canaries. Rather, these duple-time
movements seem to require a certain gravitas, so that the occasional
suspirans figure (as in G14, mm. 12 and 14) becomes an expressive
event, not just an ornamental flourish.

7.14 Rampes recording of unknown works which he attributes
to Froberger is a selection of mostly anonymous music from seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century manuscripts. These Rampe has been able
to establish on the basis of compositional, stylistic and paleographic
criteria as being by Froberger. But as noted above, these criteria
amount to very little, and most of the music, far from being unknown,
has been considered and rejected by previous Froberger scholars. The
CD opens with a composition by Rampe himself—one of two praeludia
described as being in the style … of Frobergers toccatas,
but employing rapid figuration and modulations that to this ear do not
sound much like Froberger.120 The only music actually by the composer may be G2,
played here in Grimms C-minor version, and Suite 18, here in the
D-minor version transmitted in two English manuscripts.121 This version of G2 comes at the end of a suite that Rampe attributes
to the composers father Basilius, on the basis of the initials
BF attached to the Allemande. But like most of the other
attributions on this CD, this one must be considered speculative. The
pieces are identified by Rampes FbWV numbers, and
Rampes liner notes will convey to many readers an impression of
up-to-date scholarship, but as in his editions he cites mainly his own
writings, overlooking those of others, such as Claudio Annibaldis
argument against Frobergers having studied with Carissimi.122

7.15 Could any of this music really be by Froberger? Four suites, including
the one possibly by BF, are from a group of six copied anonymously
at the beginning of the Grimm tablature. Rampe argues that these are
early works and experimental pieces intentionally kept out
of circulation by Froberger that nevertheless somehow got into the hands
of his pupils. But even if such a hypothesis were plausible—and
the attributions are unlikely on stylistic grounds—it would be
virtually unprovable. Nevertheless, there is some use in having these
anonymous pieces available in capable performances, including the praeludia
affixed to certain suites.123 My impression is that
these four suites sound more north- or central-German than Austrian,
which would make sense given the large number of Pachelbel attributions
in the same source.

7.16 From a purely musical point of view these pieces are less impressive
than the anonymous suite in D minor from the Stoos manuscript that opens
the CD. This suite is particularly notable for its Gigue, whose second
half develops a chromatic subject with considerable intensity. But it
is clear that the composer of this piece was more comfortable writing
idiomatic keyboard figuration than imaginative counterpoint. An idiomatic
sequence first heard in measures 14–15 returns twice in inverted form
in the second half (mm. 26–7, 30–3), but despite numerous
octave doublings there are hardly ever more than three real voices.124
For this to be an early work of Froberger would require that he was
already writing fugal, chromatic gigues in his youth, yet without the
mastery of four-part imitative counterpoint already displayed in the
fantasias of Libro 2. It is much more likely that a piece of
this sort is a later, semi-competent imitation of an already established
genre.

7.17 The performances are adequate, apart from two suites and a separate
sarabande played on a clavichord in what seems an unduly agressive manner;
the latter instrument is also dreadfully out of tune, notwithstanding
its original modified mean-tone temperament. But even the
harpsichord playing tends to be a bit rushed, with ornaments and phrasing
that are not always entirely clear or thought out. Whether it would
have been Frobergers practice to add preludes is impossible to
say; whether to add them today is obviously a matter of taste. There
is no manuscript evidence for playing the doubles, present in two of
the suites, as varied reprises. This practice, familiar from the English
virginalists, does occur in French lute music.125 Nevertheless, this re-ordering is musically effective, as is the use
of altered registration for some repeats, even including a buff stop
on one occasion. Such anachronisms are unobjectionable except when they
are put forth as authentic bits of original practice. Thus it is unfortunate
that Rampe asserts that we know that preludes, like doubles,
were improvised, and that his additions are in Frobergers
own style. In fact, Rampes preludes and embellishments are
of greater musical interest than the less distinguished, anonymous music
on this CD (especially the four suites from Grimm). Still, what may
be engaging in live performance becomes static when fixed in notation
or repeated in a recording, and an effort to mimic a style of the past
grows tedious precisely insofar as it is imitative rather than original.126

8. What Next for Froberger Scholarship and Performance?

8.1 Some eighteen years ago, Alexander Silbiger summarized the state
of Froberger textual research, finding that questions of authorship
remained open for four of eighteen plausibly attributed toccatas and
for eleven of thirty suites.127 Dl confirms Frobergers authorship of six of the suites (16, 17,
19, 23, 27, and 28), and although SA contains no attributions, its evident
closeness to the composers tradition further strengthens the case
for his authorship of four of those suites.128 If we can accept the
latter, then SA also confirms Frobergers authorship of Toccatas
13 and 14, which Silbiger reasonably thought to lack the composers
extravagant flights of fancy … Toccata 13 especially is a bit
tame.129

8.2 Silbiger had also pointed out in 1990 that we have nothing specifically
datable to the composers last ten years, that is, after
he disappears from the imperial payroll in 1657.130 Although the recently revealed autograph
provides no dates, its previously unknown Tombeau for Leopold Friderich
of Württemberg-Montbéliard (Sibyllas husband) presumably
was written after his death in 1662. Perhaps the similarly new Meditation
on Sibyllas own future death was composed in response to this
event as well; SA places A20, Frobergers own Meditation
… sur ma mort future, in Paris, May 1, 1660. But even if
copied from another autograph, such a date—absent from the new
source—makes one wonder whether faite means composed,
improvised, or just written down.131 Duchess Sybilla was playing the piece
later that decade,132 and its limited dissemination would
be consistent with the restrictions that Froberger evidently placed
on the copying of his works late in life. The date also strengthens
Henning Siedentopfs supposition that Froberger during his
later years renewed his connections with Paris.133 This view was based primarily on the
appearance of Roberdays Fugues et caprices, containing
a version of Frobergers Ricercar 7, in the same year; SA thus
indirectly confirms that Roberday published an authentic, later version
of the first ricercar in the 1658 autograph (A-Wn
Mus. Hs. 16560), strengthening the possibility that revised texts of
other pieces transmitted in French sources, such as Bauyn, also are
Frobergers.134 If Froberger was still on good terms with the Marquis de Termes mentioned
in SAs title for A13, then perhaps in 1660 he stayed in Paris
at the palace that had been completed during the preceding decade by
the tax farmer Pierre Aubert, with whose wife the marquis evidently
had an extended gallanterie.135

8.3 More generally, the two new apograph manuscripts tend to confirm
the hypotheses and conjectures of long-time Froberger scholars such
as Silbiger and Siedentopf concerning the stylistic development and
dissemination of Frobergers music. They offer no conflicting or
new attributions for previously known works, and such new movements
and readings as they do add are consistent with the picture that was
already emerging of a repertory whose texts developed through both revisions
by the composer and likely interventions by copyists—the two types
of change often being difficult to discriminate. From a textual point
of view, the more tantalizing of the two new copies is the one that
is probably earlier, and whose main copyist has been more positively
identified: Dl. On the other hand, readings in SA in general are close
to those of other late sources (apparently including the new autograph).
Dl and SA confirm what Silbiger, Ishii, and others have previously argued:
that, for the works discussed here, all of the extant manuscript copies
are textually independent of one another, even in the case of works
that appeared in the early prints; and that all of the apograph sources
derive, probably through lost intermediaries, from autographs distinct
from those preserved in Vienna. Whether the missing parents included
an autograph presented to the elector of Saxony, or one held by Johann
Jacob Walther of Mainz—both conjectures have been raised by scholars—is
moot in the absence of relevant evidence; SA appears to be very close
to the new autograph in the brief portions of the latter that have been
published as examples in the auction catalogue, but SA cannot be a copy
of the latter as its titles differ in at least one important respect
(the date for A20).

8.4 Clearly the views offered above will need to be revisited if and
when the new autograph becomes available. But Dl and SA already reaffirm
the need for subjecting every source, including anonymous, late copies,
to deeply critical analysis. Above all, it is clearer than ever that
Frobergers keyboard works stand in need of a genuinely critical
edition. The most recent complete edition, although superficially
modeled on the great Bach edition issued by the same publisher, was
not based on all of the important sources available even at the time
of publication, and it confuses probable refinements of the composer
with earlier and later corruptions.136 It is likely that we will never find definite answers to the most pressing
questions about attribution and chronology that afflict this repertory—just
as the composers biography may remain largely hidden from us.
But it will be wise to put off further speculation about these matters,
including efforts to deduce chronology through style analysis, until
we have a genuine critical edition. Until then, it will be equally idle
to devise idiosyncratic numbering systems that unsystematically mingle
genuine and doubtful compositions. If Bach studies can furnish a useful
model for Froberger scholars, it is in the realization that only through
the meticulous evaluation of all sources and a complete collation of
readings that a true picture of a works compositional and reception
histories can emerge.

8.5 A small number of performers have always recognized the beauty
of Frobergers music, despite our incomplete knowledge of his life
and the faulty texts in which so much of the repertory is preserved.
The performances reviewed above all follow a modern tradition of Froberger
interpretation that can be traced especially to Gustav Leonhardt. As
fine as they all are, common to these three recordings, and in general
to modern performances of seventeenth-century keyboard music, is their
tendency to make the latter sound pretty much like eighteenth-century
music as it is currently understood. Two of the players exercise their
imagination in adding embellishments, even whole preludes, to the extant
texts. But although doubtless a part of historical practice in this
repertory, this type of free invention is in some ways less difficult,
less creative, than attempting to recreate more basic seventeenth-century
practices.

8.6 Much of Frobergers keyboard music, like that of his teacher
Frescobaldi, was vocally inspired, and therefore it is not surprising
to encounter, especially in his toccatas and laments, the elements of
vocal performance that were presumably used in what Frescobaldi called madrigali moderni.137 Frescobaldi may well have had in mind
the monodic madrigals of Caccini and his imitators; Froberger, by the
time he reached Brussels in 1650 or Paris in 1652, could have been influenced
by both Italian and French monody. Performance of the former is documented
in numerous elementary treatises; for the French air de cour we
have a detailed performance treatise by Bénigne de Bacilly.138
The latter, insufficiently regarded by modern singers, has been practically
ignored by instrumentalists, yet singing was fundamental to seventeenth-century
musical culture, and contemporary players could hardly have ignored
the refined art described by Bacilly.139

8.7 Froberger rarely notates ornament signs, but, except in the new autograph, like
Frescobaldi he employs only the letter t, presumably for tremolo
or tremoletto, to use the terminology most common in contemporary
Italian and German treatises.140 Trills on these recordings usually start on the beat and from the upper
note, but the rule to accentuate the upper note, turning it into an
accented appoggiatura, reflected a change in style that apparently took
place only during the last decades of the seventeenth century, after
Frobergers death. Even Quantz still expected unaccented passing
appoggiaturas in some contexts.141

8.8 Two written-out instances of the trillo (in S19 and A20)
are bound to attract attention, but whether the ornament should be added
elsewhere is doubtful. The ornament is obviously not idiomatic to keyboard
instruments, and its repeated use outside of a few extraordinary passages—both
times in connection with a sudden chromatic descent—would quickly
become an annnoying mannerism. The same probably applies to the ribatutta.
On the other hand, Froberger writes out numerous esclamationi of
various types, as well as cadential groppi, both of which can
probably be understood as routine ornaments that were added improvisatorily
by many players. The most common seventeenth-century ornament, the accent
or port de voix, is heard relatively infrequently in these performances,
and almost never in the free manner that can be extrapolated from seventeenth-century
sources. Yet it is evident from the music of Kuhnau and the few other
seventeenth-century composers who notated these ornaments that they
could have been as common in German keyboard music as Bacilly suggests
they were in French singing.

8.9 More important than the use of particular ornaments are the approaches
to articulation and rhythm that some of them imply. Any ideas that we
can gain from seventeenth-century sources about these matters may be
very useful, since we have so little direct evidence for how Frobergers
keyboard music would have been played. Rampe and Rémy are particularly
adamant in their use of strong silences darticulation before
most accented beats. This produces an impression of clarity and, in
quick movements, a great deal of energy. But although a standby of modern
harpsichord playing, this approach may not be universally desirable
in older repertory, and its use has no direct documentary basis.

8.10 Bacilly makes it clear that ports de voix or accents
were often sung before the beat, or even straddling it, the voice pushing
upwards from a note to the one above it in a way that was expressively
imprecise with respect to rhythm. This practice is akin to the anticipatione
della syllaba, which in effect slurs a short afterbeat, often resolving
a dissonance (as in a 4–3 cadential suspension), not to the previous
but to the following note.142 The practice would
have been preferred by singers because it requires less physical tension
than pronouncing a new syllable immediately after a very short note.
It is impossible to prove that keyboard players did something similar.
But a glide from a short upbeat into the downbeat, although antithetical
to modern harpsichord or organ articulation, would soften the effect
of many passages, adding warmth to cadences and other moments, especially
in Frobergers slower movements.

8.11 This is not to argue for sloppy playing or for the consistent
slurring from weak to strong notes that became common in the nineteenth
century. But there may well have been less regularity with respect to
articulation during Frobergers lifetime than afterwards. Conventions
that eventually were widely applied to rhythm, especially in French
music (overdotting, notes inégales), may not yet have
been codified, especially in solo keyboard music. A musician who traveled
as widely as Froberger would have come into contact with many local
traditions; such a person is perhaps less likely than more sedentary
ones to have followed any one set of rules in his own playing, or to
have expected performers of his music to apply them. Indeed, one reason
for his skepticism about others playing his music might have been
the insularity, the lack of exposure to international styles, that made
most players far more parochial than he would have been. The discretion
that he anticipated in the performance of his most expressive passages
might well have included a certain practiced informality, what Caccini
had called sprezzatura, in the performance of ornaments and the
interpretation of notated rhythms.

8.12 Whereas the word discretion has become associated
in modern writings with freedom of tempo and rhythm, it may also have
implied the type of unwritten ornamentation that Bacilly prescribes
for the singing of French airs. A notable feature of these airs
is their strophic form, the music being repeated with variations for
successive stanzas; the practice is reminiscent of the doubles
employed in lute and keyboard music. Extant doubles for Frobergers
pieces are rhythmically simpler, employing more regular motivic patterns,
than those written out in the airs discussed by Bacilly; they correspond
more closely to the definition of double given by the German
writer Friedrich Erhardt Niedt.143 Yet it is possible that the discretion called for in his
music might have included something like the expressively irregular
embellishment of the French vocal tradition.144

8.13 It would appear, from the correspondence between Sibylla and Huygens,
that by the time of Frobergers death it was already axiomatic
that no one could play his music with proper discretion
(rechte Discretion) without having heard him.145 This, however, was part of the Duchesss answer to Huygenss
repeated efforts to get her to send him more of Frobergers music.
Huygens had previously flattered the duchess, telling her that, according
to Froberger himself, her playing would be mistaken for that of the
composer by one who could not see who was playing.146 Given her reluctance
to send anything to Huygens, the significance of Sibyllas reply
should not be overestimated; she was justifying her refusal to send
him this very piece! In fact, to play with proper discretion
could not have been so difficult or rare if she, the organist Grieffgens,
the Roman singer Anna Bergerotti, and the German Francesco
all understood it.147

8.14 Nevertheless, what discretion meant,
or what Frobergers music required, might have been growing unclear
by the end of the century. The term recurs in Bachs D-major Toccata,
BWV 912, in precisely the sort of passage where SA marks it in Frobergers
toccatas. BWV 912 is an early work, composed as early as 1707 or so,
but the marking con discrezione occurs only in a later version.148 It would not be surprising if the music
of Froberger, like that of Bach, gradually accumulated performance markings.
These might have been added both by Froberger himself and by those who
considered themselves in the know about his playing. Sibylla lived until
1707, and during the thirty years after her refusal to pass Frobergers
music on to Huygens, she or another musician might have reconsidered
such a position, at the same time making efforts to insure that the
music would be properly performed. Just as in the nineteenth century,
it might have seemed natural to add additional performance markings,
such as those in SA.

8.15 Despite their differences, the performances considered above reflect
a modern consensus about discretion and other aspects of
Froberger performance. Although I have concentrated on their shortcomings,
I would emphasize that only within the last twenty years could one have
expected to hear recordings of this repertory as convincing as these.
This has been made possible in part by the continuing appearance of
editions like those also reviewed here. If I have been hard on those
editions, it is because I believe it is important for future publications
to avoid their mistakes. But each of these editions and recordings is
worth having, and each adds to our understanding of seventeenth-century
music.

8.16 But what is most essential now is publication of the new autograph
in a suitable scholarly format. Ideally, this would be followed by a
new, genuinely critical edition of Frobergers works based on comparative
evaluations of all available sources. That will not solve all the mysteries
of this music, but it could settle some of the easier questions. Needless
to say, it will also allow us to hear the music, perhaps in ways not
yet dreamt of.

References

* David Schulenberg (dschulen@wagner.edu)
is Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Wagner
College, Staten Island, New York.

3 Two large autograph manuscripts are designated Libri 2
and 4, implying the loss of at least two other books. See Alexander
Silbiger, Tracing the Contents of Frobergers Lost Autographs,
Current Musicology 54 (1993): 5–23.

4 See Claudio Annibaldi, Froberger in Rome: From Frescobaldis
Craftsmanship to Kirchers Compositional Secrets, Current
Musicolgy 58 (1995): 5–27; in addition to presenting evidence
for Frobergers ennoblement, Annibaldi provides for the first
time a convincing Schriftprobe for the autograph character
of Libri 2 and 4 (pp. 23–4). For a French version of
the same article, see Froberger à Rome: De lartisanat
frescobaldien aux secrets de composition de Kircher, in J.
J. Froberger: Musicien européen (Paris: Klincksieck,
1998), 39–61. Rudolf Rasch and Pieter Dirksen published several
studies of the life and musical sources (individual titles below)
in The Harpsichord and Its Repertoire, ed. Pieter Dirksen
(Utrecht: STIMU, 1992). More recently, Akira Ishii has investigated
the manuscript tradition in his Duke University dissertation, The
Toccatas and Contrapuntal Keyboard Works of Johann Jacob Froberger:
A Study of the Principal Sources (1999).

6 See also Bob
van Asperens discussion of this
manuscript in the present issue of this Journal (—ed.).

7 For instance, I find no mention of the dissertations by Ishii
(The Toccatas and Contrapuntal Keyboard Works of Froberger)
and Vincent J. Panetta (Hans Leo Hassler and the Keyboard
Toccata: Antecedents, Sources, Style, Harvard University,
1991).

12 The source
(D-B AmB 340) also contains genuine
Sweelinck pieces; it is odd that Rampe does not mention the borrowings
here or in his Sweelinck edition (Sämtliche Orgel‑
und Clavierwerke, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2003–).

14 Actually only the first of the four fantasias in Min. 714 bears
an attribution to Ch: Walter, and except in the last
piece the style is so generic that there is no reason, other than
their incompetence, to assume that these are by the same composer
as the equally inept Paduan that precedes them in the
edition. The last fantasia (no. 38), in an entirely different style
(and musically competent), appears to be the transcription of a
canzona. (For the source designations, like Min. 714,
see the Appendix.)

15 Rampe publishes only two works by this composer, adding just
one to the pieces published in DTÖ 27 as works of Georg von
Reutter.

16 In measure 27, an editorial suggestion to change note 4 from c''
to b' overlooks the more likely possibility that
notes 2–4 in the soprano are all a step too high. The same
error in measure 38 elicits no editorial comment at all, although it
produces meaningless dissonances (c'/e'/d''–b/d'/e'')
on the last two beats. On the other hand, an editorial (bracketed)
note in the upper voice in measure 39 (b') is superfluous,
a consequence of Rampes accepting an equally superfluous upper
note (c'') evidently present in the source
in the previous measure but producing an anachronistic dominant-seventh
chord.

17 In measure 7, the open fifth c/g/g' is surely an error
for c/g/e'; the parallel octaves between measures 8 and
9 can be avoided by substituting c/e for e/g; and
a meaningless dissonance in measure 13 can be avoided by transposing
bass d–f–d down to B-flat–d–B-flat.
In measure 16, sixteenths d''–f'
perhaps should be replaced by a single sixteenth a'.

19 Apparently the only basis for even considering Scheidt as the
composer of the piece is that it follows an early version
of Scheidts Toccata super In te Domine speravi in Min.
714, its sole source.

20 One of the pieces had been previously assigned to Philips by
Michael Belotti, three others by Dirksen (p. xvii).

21 To avoid
cumbersome repetition, individual movements are referred to here
with abreviations. A20 represents the Allemande from
Suite 20. Further on the numbering of Frobergers works, see
par. 4.5.

22 I am grateful
to Dr. Karl W. Geck, Music Librarian, for first bringing the manuscript
to my attention and allowing me to see it during a visit to the
library in December 2000.

24 Although it remains under private ownership, and therefore bears
its own RISM siglum (D-Bsa), the
archive is on deposit at the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer
Kulturbesitz in Berlin (D-B). I
am grateful to Dr. Helmut Hell, director of the Musikabteilung,
for making SA available to me during my visit in December 2004.
The most thorough account of the archives identification is
that of Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Bach Is Back in Berlin:
The Return of the Sing-Akademie Archive from Ukraine, revised
version (March 2003) published online by the Ukrainian Research
Institute, Harvard University http://www.huri.harvard.edu/work7.html.
In a Prefatory Note to the present volume, the Chairman
of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell, describes
this as the first work from the archive to be made available
to a broad readership in scholarly form (p. xvi). But in addition
to works issued before the repatriation of the archive (such as
C. P. E. Bachs Double Concerto W. 47), other publications
include Mary Oleskiewiczs edition of Johann Joachim Quantz:
Six Quartets for Flute, Violin, Viola, and Basso Continuo (Ann
Arbor: Steglein Publishing, 2004).

25 Wollny, Toccaten, Suiten, Lamenti, xxii, gives the titles
of the suites, e.g., Der Naseweise Orgelprobierer (The
stuck-up organ tester [my translation]). The gigues in the
suites in F minor and E major are in cut time, the others in 6/8.
In the suite in B-flat major the courante is a variation of the
allemande, giving the suite as a whole a form similar to that of
J. S. Bachs early Praeludium et Partita, BWV 833; together
with the Kuhnau-like style, this implies a date of composition around
1700. The Sing-Akademie archive also includes copies of the Bourgeat
and Mortier prints from 1696 and ca. 1710, respectively, as well
as what Wollny identifies as Suite XVI (Allemande - Courante
- Sarabande) in D-Bsa 4447–4448
(p. xxii, note 2; I did not see this).

26 I am grateful to him for giving me pre-publication access to
his review; see Early Keyboard Journal 23 (2005): 143–8.

30 A sampling of problems: In the first piece (Toccata 2 in D minor),
the sharp in measure 42 is editorial, as is the tie from measure 47 to measure
48. In Toccata 14 in G major, measure 34, fourth beat, quarter note a',
present in the source, is still missing from the transcription,
and the last note of measure 35 (lower staff) is a, not f;
hence the editorial flat on the following b is unnecessary
(it is absent from the concordance in the Mortier print). In Toccata
15 in G minor, alto a in measure 14 is not in the source (a significant
omission, since other sources show various readings for the alto
in this measure). In Suite 13 in D minor, Allemande, measure 2, the editorial
flat is unnecessary and is absent from Mortier; in measure 15, the eighth
note f' is still missing (it is present in Mortier).
In Suite 16 in G major, Allemande, measure 2 is accurately transcribed,
but the source, which shows a correction here, is clearly defective,
and what is printed as a slur should surely be a tie connecting
tenor a on the fourth beat to a previously struck note on
the same pitch (which ought to bear downward as well as upward stems).
The chromaticism (a'-natural–a'-flat)
shown at the outset of the Lamentation for Ferdinand III
is a striking gesture, but Min. 743 places a flat on the first a'
as well, as does the autograph, and this corresponds with the parallel
passage at the end of measure 2.

31 The tie is present in Dl (according to Raschs edition)
but not in 10 Suittes.

33 E.g., superfluous flats in A19, the opening movement in the manuscript:
on g', measure 8, and the first e' in measure
15; also a sharp in the triple-time version of G13 (m. 26, last
note) that is contradicted in the duple-time version (m. 14). Suite
27 shows many sharps on putative leading tones that are absent from
the concordance in SA (Gigue, mm. 4, 7, 8, 13; Courante, mm. 10,
15; Sarabande, m. 11).

35 Silbiger, review of Toccaten, Suiten, Lamenti. The facsimile
begins with the first page of music, omitting the exterior and binding
of the manuscript.

36 For instance, on page 12, just before the return to common time,
the faint note c is in pencil.

37 The blue-ink stamp of the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature
and Art in Kyiv is repeated on p. 11, but not the earlier Russian-language
stamp of the Kiev State Conservatory, presumably because pp. 1–10
had become detached from the binding by 1973 when the collection
was taken from the conservatory (see Grimsted, Bach Is Back
in Berlin, 6).

38 For instance, the original copyist was likely responsible for
the unique correction of Toccate to Toccata
on p. 7, but one cannot be so sure of other ink corrections, e.g., c'-sharp to b-natural on the same page, second
system. The preface identifies a few corrections that are more obviously
in another hand (p. xix).

39 Certainly the verbal entries share a common style with the sample
of Kortkamps handwriting in the first edition of Musik
in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–47),
vol. 7, fig. 68.

40 The symbols take the form of a cross beneath a circle, described
somewhat tantalizingly in the preface as a Venus sigil
(p. xix).

41 Howard Schott, Parameters of Interpretation in the Music
of Froberger, in Froberger: Musicien européen,
102–4.

42 Hamburg, 1739; new edition by Friederike Ramm, Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1999. On p. 89, however, Mattheson illustrates the principle of discrétion in two otherwise unknown works by Froberger.
The attribution is perhaps doubtful, as both examples begin with
flourishes absent from Frobergers extant toccatas and fantasies.
Similar flourishes do occur at the beginnings of north-German pieces,
and in the praeludia attributed to Froberger in SA 4441–4445.

43 These signs are distinct from Frobergers t,
drawn both in his autographs and sometimes in SA as a very small
cross. Some instances of the latter are here transcribed, misleadingly,
in the form of the later French signs for trills and mordents (as
in the Tombeau de Blancrocher, m. 22).

44 Mattheson, Capellmeister, 130. Timothy Roberts in his
review of the present facsimile mistakenly identifies the suite
in question as no. 14; see Early Music 33 (2005): 342.

45 The opening passages of Suite 12 and Suite 29 are
practically identical, save for the key. But the courante of Suite
29 is a somewhat simplistic variation of the allemande, and
the sarabande is uncharacteristically square for Froberger. Perhaps
most telling is the gigue, which is too short, its subject too simple,
and the counterpoint too predictable, to be Frobergers; the
second half is particularly inept, largely in three parts and with
an aimless bass line in measure 10. These features imply that, although
able to imitate Frobergers style with some success in the
rhapsodic allemande, the composer lacked Frobergers contrapuntal
sophistication. All four movements repeat cadence types and other
formulas (including an odd stuttering figure in measures 4, 10, and 11
of the sarabande) absent from pieces attributed to Froberger.

46 Johannes Wolgast included the work in his edition of Böhms Sämtliche Werke (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel,
1927), and Böhm should remain a candidate. His ability to mimic
other styles in an imaginative way is clear from his attributed
suites in the Möller manuscript, where the present suite follows
a copy of Böhms Capriccio in D in the same hand. The
tonality of E-flat major is not in itself a reason for rejecting
the piece from Frobergers output—the Lamentation for
Ferdinand III is in the equally rare F minor—but a low BB-flat
in the allemande is suspicious.

48 The Allemande comprises just thirteen measures, the first half
containing seven, hence atypically being slightly longer than the
second. A modulation to C-sharp minor (m. 9) is striking, and is
echoed in the Courante and Gigue, although these are not variations
of the Allemande. But sequences in the Courante (mm. 4–6,
12–14) and Sarabande (throughout) are more regular than is
typical of Froberger, recalling instead Austrian ensemble music
of the next generation; moreover the second half of the Courante
seems aimless, and there are odd textual problems, possibly involving
octave displacements, especially in the Double, which is very weak.
The Gigue, based on a single arpeggiated figure (as in Bachs
first Partita) is of a type never found in firmly attributed pieces
by Froberger.

49 For Silbiger, Tracing the Contents, 19, the attribution
of Suite 27, together with that of Suites 21–23, 25, and 26,
required further study.

50 In the sources known as Edgeworth, Bauyn, Düben, and Min.
725; see Ishii, The Toccatas and Contrapuntal Works,
40ff. and the table on pp. 272–3 listing concordances in Bourgeats
1693 print. Comparison of readings in SA to those listed by Ishii
(pp. 72–81) confirms the independence of the sources.

52 Rampes numbers incorporate those of Adler as the last two
digits; thus, Adlers Suite 13 is Rampes FbWV 613. As
with the BWV numbers used for Bach Rampe attaches letter suffixes
to some numbers. But as with Bach it is never clear whether these
suffixes represent early, late, or inauthentic versions of a piece,
and some numbers seem to be illogically assigned; e.g., FbWV 623c
is the gigue of Suite 7, copied by Bulyowsky as an addition to Suite
23; FbWV 607a, b, and c are triple-time versions of the same gigue,
distinct from Frobergers autograph version but not clearly
earlier or later.

54 The first use of the word partita to mean suite
may be on the bilingual title page of Johann Kriegers Sechs
musicalische Parthien (Nuremberg, 1697), which translates the
last word as partite. The Sothebys brochure describes
the five autograph suites as partitas, but the word
does not appear in the source.

58 There is no good reason to think that gigues notated in duple
meter were played in triple meter, despite repeated speculation
to that effect (most recently by Lucy Hallman Russell, Two-for-three
Notation in Froberger, in J. J. Froberger: Musicien européen,
121–41). Rather than suppose that composers persisted in writing
triple-time gigues in both duple and triple notation, it makes more
sense to assume that the gigue in duple meter was an independent
type that continued into the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
with published examples by Kuhnau and Bach. (The duple-time gigue
in Kuhnaus D-minor suite is particularly hard to convert to
triple time.) Perrines Pieces de luth en musique shows
how to turn an allemande into a gigue by sharpening certain dotted
rhyhthms—without suggesting a more radical alteration into
triple meter. Starke, Frobergers Suitentänze, 34–5,
points out that where we have duple and triple versions of the same
gigue, these are precisely that: compositionally distinct versions,
not alternate ways of notating the same piece (Rampe, in Deutsche
Orgel- und Claviermusik des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, p. xxx,
reaches the same conclusion with regard to G7).

62 But in the 1649 autograph, Suites 1–3 are in the same keys
as Toccatas 1–3, respectively, and Toccata 4 is in C, the
key of Suite 5. Toccatas 5 and 6 are elevations, which might have
made it inappropriate to pair them with suites.

63 Rudolf Rasch, Johann Jakob Froberger and the Netherlands,
in The Harpsichord and Its Repertoire, 126–7, notes
the long relationship between the Froberger family and the Stuttgart
court. Sybilla settled in nearby Héricourt after
the death of her husband, Duke Leopold Friedrich of Württemberg-Montbéliard,
in 1662.

65 For instance, for the 1616 and 1628 editions of his Toccate
e partite Libro primo, originally published in 1615, Frescobaldi
rewrote the preface, replaced and re-ordered some of the variations
(partite), substituted entire pieces, and eventually added
several compositions now known as the Aggiunta. Pre-publication
versions of some pieces are preserved in manuscripts; see Claudio
Annibaldi, Musical Autographs of Frescobaldi and His Entourage
in Roman Sources, Journal of the American Musicological
Society 43 (1990): 393–425.

67 Froberger is assumed to have entered the survice of the duchess
sometime after leaving the imperial household, following the death
of Ferdinand III in 1657.

68 According to an inscription attached to the tombeau in Min. 743.
The event took place in November 1652; a concert in Frobergers
honor is sarcastically reported in the Sept. 29, 1652, installment
of Jean Lorets La Muze historique, ou Recueil des lettres
en vers, vol. 1, eds. J.A.D. Ravenel and E.V. de La Pelouze
([Paris]: P. Jannet, 1857), 290–2.

69 See the edition with commentary by Antoine Adam ([Paris]: Gallimard,
1961), 2:638ff. and commentary (p. 1416). Pardaillans son
Roger, also marquis de Termes, was born about 1639 and is therefore
unlikely to be the person referred to. Catherine Massip notes Charles
Richards complaint in 1649 that Pardaillan owed him a considerable
sum, and considering the debts that Blancrocher also left behind,
one might conclude that at Paris Froberger was in the company of
a colorful, free-spending crowd; see Massip, Froberger et
la France, in J. J. Froberger: Musicien européen,
71.

71 This is not the only play on the word discrétion
in a Froberger title; Min. 743 makes a comparable pun with regard
to A14.

72 Rasch, in Vingt et une suites, p. xxvii, assumes that
the triple-time version is without doubt the original,
but see below. Mazarin left Paris (but not France) for a second
time on August 19, 1652, which might be why Wollny, preface to Toccaten,
Suiten, Lamenti (p. xx), following Rasch and Dirksen, Eine
neue Quelle, 142, concludes that G13 must have been
composed in the latter half of the year 1652. But it would
be safer to leave the exact date of composition open.

73 Wollny, Toccaten, Suiten, Lamenti, p. xx, identifies this
as marking the birth in May 1653 of Emperor Ferdinands second
daughter, that is, Eleonore Maria Josefa, later electress of Saxony
and queen of Poland.

74 Froberger returned to the imperial payroll (but not necessarily
to Vienna) in 1653, and his second surviving letter to Kircher is
dated Feb. 9, 1654 (from Regensburg; complete text in Annibaldi,
Froberger à Rome, 60–1). But there is no
specific mention of his attending the imperial diet or the coronations
of 1653. The independent transmission of the Courante (in Hintze)
and the Gigue (in Bauyn, in a triple-time version) suggests that
at least these movements might have been composed separately.

76 Kuhnau had mentioned Froberger by way of justifying his own programmatic
pieces, the Biblical Sonatas, in his preface to the latter (cited
by Rasch and Dirksen, Eine neue Quelle, 144–5).

77 A16, sur le subject dun chemin montaigneux
in SA, is described in Dl as repraesentans monticidium—possibly
an avalanche (Bergsturz, in Rasch and Dirksen, Eine
neue Quelle, 143), or perhaps merely a tumble down the
hill (Sturz vom Berg, in Bob van Asperen, Neue
Erkenntnisse über die Allemande, faite en passant le Rhin
(Theil 1), Concerto 191 (March 2004): 26). The dedication
of at least one movement in each of Suites 17 and 18 to members
of the Württemberg ruling family might stem from a visit to
the court in Stuttgart prior to the 1660s (Rasch and Dirksen, Eine
neue Quelle, 143, connect G18, nommée la Philotte
in Dl, with Sibyllas cousin Sophia Louisa; the new autograph gives the same title, spelled Philette).

78 The copy in the Tappert tablature obliterates the effect by giving
measures 13–14 of the Sarabande an octave lower—an indication
that the tablature version was an inaccurate transcription of a
score original. Other parallelisms involve the cadences at the end
of the first half in the Allemande and the Sarabande, and the opening
of the second half in the Allemande and the Courante.

79 The date is missing from the only other copy, in the Hintze manuscript,
which otherwise presents an extremely similar text.

80 In a companion study, forthcoming in a Liber amicorum for Alexander Silbiger, I will consider the meaning and significance
of Frobergers programmatic pieces, including the
newly relevant Suite 27.

81 In Suite 15, Dl and the new autograph give as gigue the movement
now designated G28 but evidently Frobergers preferred final
movement for this suite.

82 Wollny lists features of SA where the copyist faithfully
imitates many features of Frobergers handwriting and notational
conventions (p. xviii). The features listed are those found
in the imperial dedication copies and the new autograph but would
not necessarily characterize composing drafts or copies made for
personal use.

83 This is a particular problem in Rampes edition, which admits
clearly corrupt texts as well as embellished readings from sources
whose connection with Froberger is very tenuous.

84 In the toccatas, the free (à discrétion)
sections appear to have undergone refinement more frequently than
the contrapuntal passages, although the present sources provide
relatively little evidence for this.

85 See, for example, David Fuller, Sous les doits de Chambonnière,
Early Music 21 (1993): 191–202.

86 Frobergers view was reported in the oft-quoted letter of
Oct. 23, 1667, from Duchess Sibylla to Huygens, and the latters
reply of August 4, 1668. Both are in Correspondance et Œuvre
musicales de Constantin Huygens, pp. CCIV and 45–6, respectively;
newly transcribed and translated in Rasch, Johann Jakob Froberger
and the Netherlands, appendix, nos. 4 and 5 (pp. 240–5).
Rasch converts the first, old-style date to Nov. 2, 1667.

88 The copy, in the Düben manuscript, is edited by John Irving
in The Anders von Düben Tablature: Uppsala, University Library,
Instr. Mus. i. hs. 408, Corpus of Early Keyboard Music 28 (Holzgerlingen:
American Institute of Musicology / Hänssler Verlag, 2000).
Toccata 2 also bears a date (1650) in Bauyn; see ref.
131 below.

89 Wollny, Toccaten, Suiten, Lamenti, xix, cites Rampes
edition for this view, but the underlying argument goes back at
least to Silbiger, Tracing the Contents, 9.

90 In particular, in Toccata 1, Bauyn and Bourgeat (and now SA)
give a more florid reading for measure 11 which, as Ishii notes (The
Toccatas and Contrapuntal Keyboard Works, 268), could not
have been arrived at independently; an error in Bourgeat suggests
that this embellishment (like several others) was hard to read in
the lost manuscript parent. SA also agrees with Bauyn in several
other readings in Toccata 1, confirming the relatively close relationship
that exists between other concordances in these two sources; in
measure 18, the reading of SA was originally that of Bauyn, the note a being corrected by erasure of two beams from a sixteenth
to a quarter (the reading of the autograph).

92 In the Allemande, SA lacks most of the dotted and Lombardic rhythms.

93 In addition to plainer rhythms in the Allemande, Dl gives simpler
voice leading in the Sarabande, measures 15–16, and Gigue, measure 2.
On the other hand, in Dl the Courante is slightly more lively, with
a distinctive repeated-note upbeat and greater left-hand motion
in measures 8–9. Other readings in Dl, such the G-sharps in measures
11 and 12 (bass and treble) and A for F-sharp in measure 12 (bass), all
in the Allemande, may be errors or faulty corrections.

94 In Suite 15 there are numerous variants, starting in measure 1 of
the allemande, where Dl gives more continuous arpeggiation in sixteenths
on the third beat. Suite 16 is preserved in SA as well as Dl, but
the former tends to agree with the prints (except where the latter
are corrupt); for example, in the Allemande, measure 8, Dl gives continuous
sixteenths in the alto where SA and the prints have a dotted rhythm.
Raschs edition of A16 twice shows the marking alleg.
(mm. 3, 8), absent from other sources.

95 Refinements in Dl: in the Gigue, measures 2, 4, and 9 (but Dl has
a simpler rhythm in the upbeat of the courante). Ornament signs
in the print: Allemande, measures 2, 7; Courante, upbeat, measures 2, 4; etc.
Piano: Sarabande, measure 19. Both Dl and the prints are
independent of the D-minor version of Suite 18, preserved in two
English sources; although musically cogent, the latter is more likely
the later version, as shown by the octave displacement of the melody
at the opening of the Gigue.

96 But sometimes SA and the prints are clearly wrong, as in S13,
measure 17, where tenor f fails to prepare the dissonant a
in the next measure (it is properly prepared in Dl).

98 Faulty accidentals: sharp on D after the double bar in both Courante
and Gigue; alternate versions: closing passages in both halves of
the Allemande (mm. 7–8, 15–16). That the autograph was
vague in the latter passage is evident from the apparently defective
readings in all three sources; e.g., in measure 7, Dl lacks a beat in
the lower staff whereas SA and Tappert give different unlikely readings
for the same cadence formula (Tappert has repeated thirty-seconds a'-sharp–a'-sharp; SA omits the accidental).

99 G30 also appears in the Stoos manuscript and twice
in Dl, each time attached to a different suite and in somewhat distinct
versions. In the Tombeau for Blancrocher, SA gives a distinctive
version, adding measures 36–7, which contain a written-out ribatutta (a similar figure occurs within SA at the end of Toccata 18). That
a real revision occurred here is evident from the distinctive versions
of the preceding measure (m. 35) in the two sources. SAs text
is not perfect, and errors in measure 3 and a missing tie over measures 18–19
must be corrected by reference to Min. 743.

100 The Gigue in Bauyn is the one now known as G28,
since Adler edited it as part of the present suite; Dl includes
it in Suite 15.

101 The second half ends with a poorer version of
the final cadence of C1. The possibility that the copyist left out
a few beats, as in C13, is unlikely unless the double that follows,
which has exactly the same structure, was based on a defective copy
of the Courante.

102 Silbiger, Tracing the Contents, 14–16;
the reference is to Suite 24 in D, which shows some of the same
peculiarities of phrasing as C28 in Dl.

103 Perhaps some examples by Denis Gautier and other
lutenists are from before 1650. The traditional attribution of several
doubles to Louis Couperin (for pieces by Chambonnières) can
no longer be taken for granted; see Marc Roger Normand (Couperin
de Turin): Livre de tablature de clavecin de Monsieur de Druent,
écrit par Couperin, facsimile edition with introduction
by Davitt Moroney (Geneva: Minkoff, 1998), p. 14, reviewed by David
Fuller in this Journal 6, no. 2 (2000), http://sscm‑jscm.org/v6/no2/fuller.html.

104 As in the double for the Allemande, measures 2, 4,
12; for the Courante, measures 2, 11.

105 The last two movements (the double of the Sarabande,
and the Gigue) were presumably present on leaves now missing from
Dl; Rasch includes texts from Stoos in his edition.

106 This sort of sarabande also occurs in Suites
3, 4, and 5 from Libro 2; in Suites 8, 23, 24, and 25; and
in the somewhat doubtful 22 and 26 (both unica from Grimm).

107 The Schwerin manuscript adds it at the end of
Suite 2; the Grimm tablature gives it separately.

108 It is unclear how the presence of a title might
signify that a version is original; Rasch must have assumed that
Froberger attached titles to pieces from the outset, but in the
case of other concordances between Dl and SA, it is always the latter
that has the more explicit title, if any.

109 In the duple-time version of the Gigue in Dl,
the soprano enters an octave too low in the second half of measure 3;
could this reflect a copy made from tablature?

111 Frescobaldis preference for equal temperatment
is documented in writings by Giovanni Battista Doni. See Mark Lindley, Grove Music Online, s.v. Temperaments, section
5 (accessed January 26, 2006), although the assertion there that
Froberger used equal temperament is apparently based only the presence
of exotic tonalities in a few pieces.

112 She also plays the Allemande and Sarabande from
Suite 2, Capriccio 6, Toccata 16, Canzon 2, and the Allemande from
Suite 7 (not Suite 1 as indicated in the packaging).

113 Judgments of harpsichord sound are necessarily
subjective and based on how particular instruments have been restored
and regulated. Verlets instrument, the much-copied one at
the Musée dUnterlinden in Colmar, underwent a ravelement
about 1680, although not the grand ravelement that was later
applied to most surviving Ruckers instruments (according to a liner
note by Christopher Clarke, who restored it).

114 E.g., adding a flat on d''
on the downbeat of A14, measure 14, a measure before it appears in the
10 Suittes and SA. Verlet does not seem to have had access
to Dl, and SA was unknown at the time her recording was made; her
texts appear to be her own.

115 According to the account of his death by the
physician Jean-Nicolas Binninger, in Observationum et curationum (Montbéliard, 1673), *72, quoted by Yves Ruggeri, Froberger
à Montbéliard, in J. J. Froberger: Musicien
européen, 27.

116 See the discussion above of the text of Dl. I
could not check the readings in the manuscript, but some peculiar
moments include: C18, measure 9 (g'–f'–e'–e'-flat);
S18, measure 7 (c'-sharp–c'); and C11, measure
4 (a C-major chord on beat 3, that is, adding a natural on bass
c instead of correcting treble g''
to e'').

117 Consequently, C11 lacks the doubled third that
gives it a special sonority, perhaps appropriate to its imperial
associations as documented in SA. There is also an annoying squeak
on bass B throughout the set.

118 Silbiger, Tracing the Contents, 16.
Particularly troublesome are the frequent pairs of equal eighths
or sixteenths, which cannot have meant the same thing as dotted
rhythms. The fact that Bauyn gives a version of G7 in triple time
is not a reason to play the movement that way when it appears in
Dl as part of Suite 23, in an early version in common time.

119 The opening dotted quarter–eight becomes
plain quarter–eighth, but so does the following dotted eighth–sixteenth
group.

120 Four other praeludia on the CD, as well as a
sarabande, are attributed to C. Grimm, the presumed copyist of the
Grimm tablature from which four suites are taken.

121 This version of G2 differs from that of Libro
2 and other sources in its regular binary form, substituting a different
cadence at the end of the first half and a different beginning to
the second. The D-minor version of Suite 18 was edited by Thurston
Dart and Davitt Moroney from B-Bc
15418, the Elizabeth Edgeworth manuscript, in John Blows
Anthology (London: Stainer & Bell, 1978). An independent
but closely related copy by William Croft in GB-Lbl
Egerton 2959 contains most of the same ornaments, which therefore
cannot be assumed to be Blows, as proposed by Dart and Moroney
and repeated here. This version is musically plausible and is clearly
the work of a good musician; whoever prepared it evidently had access
to a better text than the faulty one given by Dl and the early prints
for the G-minor version. But a melodic discontinuity at the beginning
of the Gigue—the first two notes of the treble are an octave
higher than the rest of the melody—suggests that the D-minor
version is a later adaptation. Its purpose might have been to avoid
the unusually low tessitura of the G-minor version, which never
rises above d''. The restricted compass of
the latter, which is limited to three octaves plus a whole step,
raises further questions; might it have been intended for a small
instrument, perhaps a traveling clavichord? Did the Duchess Sibylla
possess such an instrument?

123 These preludes, signed with the initials CG,
also appear in Rampes Froberger edition in a useful appendix
of pieces by other composers.

124 An unprepared fourth in measure 2, where the second
voice enters, is surely an error in the manuscript; Rampe, characteristically,
leaves it uncorrected (for alto d' read e').
But parallel octaves cannot be avoided in measures 10–11 (Rampes
suggested correction makes them direct), and the composer seems
to have been at a loss as to how to lead four parts correctly after
the fourth entry in each half.

125 As in the six courantes avec doubles in
Denis Gautiers Pièces de luth gravèes
(1669 or afterwards); modern edition in Œuvres de Denis Gautier,
ed. Monique Rollin and François-Pierre Goy (Paris: CNRS,
1996).

126 I now have mixed feelings about my own examples
of what might be called period-style improvisation, in Some
Problems of Text, Attribution, and Performance in Early Italian
Baroque Keyboard Music, this Journal 4, no. 1 (1998):
section 14, http//sscm-jscm.org/v4/no1/schulenberg.html.

127 Tracing the Contents, 12 and 19.
The article originated as a paper read at the Froberger conference
held at Montbéliard in 1990.

129 Tracing the Contents, 11. Indeed,
the opening free section of Toccata 13 is almost perfunctory, and
the two succeeding imitative sections are dry, although they might
have appealed to later, more rationalistic tastes (such as that
of Gottlieb Muffat, who copied them in an ornamented form). Toccata
14 is less regular, and its two imitative sections are reminiscent
of toccatas by Michelangelo Rossi.

131 As Rampe notes, Bauyn describes Toccata 2 as
fatto a Bruxellis anno 1650, even though the piece is
already in Libro 2, which is dated 1649 (preface to Froberger:
Neue Ausgabe, vol. 1, p. xxx). Ishii argues that this reflects
the fact that Bauyn (with SA) preserves readings later than those
of the autograph (The Toccatas and Contrapuntal Keyboard Pieces,
269–70).

132 As indicated in her letter to Huygens of Oct.
23, 1667 (see Rasch, Johann Jakob Froberger and the Netherlands,
127).

139 Numerous connections must have existed between
musicians; for instance, Michel Lambert, one of Bacillys models,
was patronized by Gaston dOrléans, in whose household
the Marquis de Termes served.

140 French tremblement might be an adaptation
of Italian tremoletto. For citations to seventeenth-century
German sources on these ornaments, see David Schulenberg, Grove
Music Online, s.v. Ornaments: German Baroque. The
German sources are often more explicit than Italian ones on the
performance of ornaments which, during the seventeenth century,
were common to both traditions.

143 In his Handleitung zur Variation (Hamburg:
Schiller, 1706), ch. 10, par. 15; the description of the Double as a broken [arpeggiated] variation is absent from the
second, posthumous edition, which was extensively revised by Johann
Mattheson and published under the title Musicalische Handleitung
(Hamburg: Schiller and Kiszner, 1721), vol. 2.

144 A few of the doubles written by DAnglebert
for works of his older contemporaries (such as Chambonnièress
Sarabande jeunes zéphirs) provide a glimpse into
this type of playing.

145 In making this comment, Sibylla says she is in
agreement with the Cologne organist Caspar Grieffgens, who had learned
to play the Memento mori (A20) from Froberger note
by note (letter of Oct. 23, 1667; no. 4 in Rasch, Johann
Jakob Froberger and the Netherlands, 242). Does this imply,
incidentally, that he played it from memory, rather than from a
written copy?

147 Huygens mentions Bergerotti in his letter of
Aug. 29, 1667; the other musicians are mentioned in passages from
letters cited above.

148 At measure 32. The possibility of direct influence
by Froberger on Bach in this regard cannot be discounted; although
only copies of Frobergers strict contrapuntal works survive
from the Bach circle, Siedentopfs suggestions for a broader
relationship (pp. 71–7) are slightly supported by the fact
that Sibyllas niece, Sofie Charlotte, married Johann Georg
II, reigning duke of Sachsen-Eisenach at the time of Bachs
birth there.